It is a sad symptom of insensitivity and callousness that some governors, a day after 73 victims were being buried in a mass grave in Benue State without condolence, were jubilantly endorsing Buhari for second term. The time was most unfortunate” – Former President Obasanjo.
By now, former President Olusegun Obasanjo missive, couched in press statement and delivered to Muhammadu Buhari’s undeclared second term Presidential bid is widely in the nation’s political discourse. Drawing attention in the portion of the letter to some governor’s insensitivity in endorsing President Buhari for a second bid to the presidency in the immediate aftermath of the mass burial in Benue State, former President Obasanjo drew attention to his own crass and reckless opportunism and callous, cold insensitivity too. The same Benue State he exploits their recent and unfortunate tragedy to showcase his humanism and concern, was the same place he ordered soldiers to sack and completely burn down whole community in Zaki Biam, killing more than 100 civilians on October 22, 2001. The killing spree lasted for up to three days and extended to villages of Vasal, Anyim, Lorja, Ugba, Sankera all located in the local government areas of Logo and Zaki Biam.
The trigger of the Zaki Biam/Logo massacres was Obasanjo’s statement at the state burial of 19 soldiers abducted and killed by Tiv militants, giving soldiers blank cheque to track and bring to books those responsible. While those responsible would have obviously melted away, helpless villagers were brutally and summarily murdered in cold blood, and their properties and buildings decimated. No responsible government would seek revenge in this form and it is doubtful up to this day, whether any real perpetrator of the crime of abducting and killing soldiers was ever found.
Four months later, on January 28, 2002, the same Obasanjo demonstrated the most egregious insensitivity and extreme banality when he remorselessly shouted down at the relatives of the victims of Ikeja military cantonment bomb blast to shut up and emotionlessly berated them that he needed not be at scene, where estimated 1,100 people perished, with more than 20,000 injured and several others unaccounted for. The cause of the tragedy was not a natural disaster but the accidental high-calibre explosive at a storage facility in the Ikeja Canton Barracks in the early morning of Sunday, January 27, 2002. While President Obasanjo, then huffed and puffed from the high office Nigerians entrusted him at a time when empathy would sooth the frayed national nerves, it was actually the commander of Ikeja military Cantonment, George Emdim that said “on behalf of the military we are sorry. This is an old ammunition depot with a high-calibre bomb. Some efforts were being made in the past to try to improve the storage facility, but this accident happened before the high authorities could do what was needed.”
The “high authorities,” that could have done the needful to forestall the accident was no other, than the one, former President Obasanjo sat at its pinnacle.
At the peak of the scheme to trample on the constitution and award himself an illegal third term in office, in lieu of life presidency he craved, former President Obasanjo signed infamous Green Tree Agreement that ceded Nigeria’s hugely endowed territory, the Bakassi Peninsula to another country in a peace time, with the sole aim to impress key western powers that he was politically compliant to enforce their vision of international order. Nigerians in their several hundreds of thousands, who were forcibly evacuated from their ancestral homes in the peninsula have been living in squalid, cold refugee camp, since then and the great humanist who owns a frontline university, a multi-billion naira private presidential library, an indefatigable campaigner who exacts himself strenuously on the national and international stage, could not offer a word to his victims huddled in an inhumane camp for more than 10 years.
While most Nigerians agree that former President Obasanjo is a malignant and untrustworthy messenger, many of the messages he delivers align with widespread national concerns. However, his opportunism in tapping on the national mood appears to me, to be a way of assuaging a heavily burdened conscience, besmirched by his cruel engagements with every tragic turn of our national life. Seeking a moral high ground without examining very closely the moral infrastructure of his private and public life appears to be his personal indictment and vendetta to our collective amnesia.
President Buhari and his All Progressive Congress have not delivered up to the expectations that they inspired. But actually, they would not have delivered anything tangible in terms of radical material improvement in the quality of life of the Nigerian people, given the existential reality of our national condition derived largely from a false start and the historical trajectories of several missed opportunities.
But the charge of nepotism and clannishness is real and very evident and cannot be excused on any account, not least on competence and efficiency which has been grossly in short supply.
President Buhari should take measures to relieve widely national consensus that he has become a hostage of a tiny cabal within his administration that want to construct puritanically ethnic and kinship-based regime. Such effort is not only futile in a pluralistic society but is bound to incur some unpleasant consequences for its authors, notwithstanding their current position of power.
The current policy focus of building the requisite and strategic infrastructure for economic recovery and sustainable growth is in the right direction. According to Nigerian constitution, President Buhari should exercise his right of refusal or throw his hat in the ring for a second term presidential bid and that should not be a matter of insidious plot and counter plot.
For me, President Buhari’s biggest failing for which he has ample time to make amend, is to make public service and office-holding unattractive especially to traditional politicians for most whom, politics is a mere seed-sowing exercise that must result in the bountiful harvests of personal wealth and opulence.
Notwithstanding, Obasanjo’s bad-belle missive, President Buhari, and his administration has many gaps to fill and even the upcoming season of electioneering cannot distract from a focused strategy of developing critical policy instruments for national economic recovery and sustainable, inclusive growth.
- Onunaiju, is of Centre for China Studies, (CCS) Utako, Abuja.
