As a Yoruba proverb says, “A person’s situation never gets so bad that they wouldn’t have somebody standing by them; it’s who that person would be that we don’t yet know.” (Kìí burúburú kó má ku enìkan mó ni; eni tí yóó kù la ò mò.) This proverb is apposite to the Yale University verbal misadventure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the efforts of some to defend him. In a lecture at the Chinua Achebe Leadership in Africa Forum, on 15 November, 2024, Obasanjo launched into the biting criticism of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, former President Muhammadu Buhari, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – Professor Mahmood Yakubu – the Judiciary, sundry others and the nation as a whole.
Obasanjo said: “As we can see and understand, Nigeria’s situation is bad. The more the immorality and corruption of a nation, the more the nation sinks into chaos, insecurity, conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence, and underdevelopment. That’s the situation mostly in Nigeria in the reign of Baba-go-slow [former President Muhammadu Buhari] and Emilokan [President Bola Ahmed Tinubu]. The failing state status of Nigeria is confirmed and glaringly indicated and manifested for every honest person to see through the consequences of the level of our pervasive corruption, mediocrity, immorality, misconduct, mismanagement, perversion, injustice, incompetence and all other forms of iniquity.”
He went further: “Let’s be clear: The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and INEC Election Result Viewing Portal (IReV) are two technological innovations that prior to 2023 were celebrated for their promise. They were to ‘potentially’ enhance the accuracy and transparency of our election results, eliminate the threat of election rigging, and boost public trust in electoral outcomes. These technologies were touted by the INEC chairman himself. In the end, these technologies did not fail. INEC willfully failed to use or implement them which resulted in widespread voting irregularities. It was a case of inviting the Fox into the hen house.”
In addition, he said: “The Judiciary in Nigeria is a very pale version of its once internationally esteemed self. Politicians after rigging elections openly ask their rivals to ‘go to court’ in Nigeria because they are aware that they have completely compromised the Judiciary system. A number of Judges are in the pockets of wealthy politicians and individuals and make judgements – not based on the law of the land but to the highest bidder. This, my learned audience, is one of the most effective strategies of State Capture – discussed next – that must be excised from Nigeria like a surgeon cutting out a malignant cancer.”
In response to the savage attack of the different individuals, institutions and the nation at large, Bayo Onanuga (President Tinubu’s Special Adviser, Information and Strategy) and countless others descended on Obasanjo with equal ferocity. Onanuga catalogued the misdeeds of Obasanjo which made him unfit for the moral high ground he was claiming. Onanuga said: “Brazen illegality and assault on the Constitution of Nigeria reached a disturbing height under the leadership of Chief Obasanjo. During Obasanjo’s era, the unconstitutional impeachment of four governors who belonged to his party occurred. The governors impeached by minority members of the Houses of Assembly were Joshua Dariye of Plateau, Rashidi Ladoja of Oyo, Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa. A man under whose watch all of these egregious infractions occurred should certainly not be the one to give any lecture on leadership and corruption. He should not be taken seriously as he reeks of profound hypocrisy of the worst form.”
He continued: “His administration also should have paid more serious attention to universities and polytechnics. In a joint vote of no confidence in our tertiary institutions, Obasanjo and his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, sought to profit from their weaknesses by establishing their private universities. As a sitting President, Chief Obasanjo abused his office to advance personal interest against the spirit and letters of our constitution when he corralled leading businessmen, women and government contractors to donate billions of naira for his Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library and Resorts in Abeokuta and his Bell University in Ota.
Furthermore, Onanuga remarked: “After wasting billions of naira on a failed third-term [tenure elongation] project in 2007, Chief Obasanjo hurriedly organised a sham electoral process that would go down in history as the most fraudulent election held in Nigeria since 1960. The beneficiary of the sham election, Umaru Yar’adua, admitted that the election was seriously flawed and, as Justice Muhammed Uwais’s panel recommended, worked towards electoral reforms. It is hypocrisy writ large when a man who presided over the worst election in Nigeria demands the sack of the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission.”
In addition, Onanuga noted: “On matters of integrity, honesty, and morality in public leadership, Chief Obasanjo is certainly not a paragon of virtue for anyone to model after. Nigerians can still remember the messy public spat between Chief Obasanjo and his then-vice president, Atiku Abubakar, over PTDF [Petroleum Technology Development Fund] money that led to a Senate Public Hearing in 2004. The sordid details of the public hearing included unsettling evidence of how Obasanjo instructed his Vice President to buy Sport Utility Vehicles for his mistresses with PTDF funds.”
Incidentally, Obasanjo himself doesn’t react well to criticism. On 5 February, 2016, the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Staff Club had invited him to its public programme titled “Reflections of an elder statesman: An evening with OBJ.” In his remarks, he had largely derogated other leaders of the country and had presented himself as transcendentally rosy-smelling. Then some of OAU’s unsparing Professors took him on and asked him why it appeared that he often became very perceptive about and enamoured of good governance only after he had left office. He burst into so much anger that the programme would have been terminated at that point, but for salutary intervention.
Some of Obasanjo’s supporters have even been seemingly more intolerant of criticism. For example, in his defence, Chief Bode George, in a 27 November, 2024 interview with Jimi Disu on YouTube titled, “Bayo Onanuga will pay for insulting Obasanjo – Bode George,” condemned Onanuga. Specifically, Bode George said: “Listen to Bayo Onanuga. Somebody says something, somebody suggests something, an old man who can be his father, you took him on and you started blasting him right, left, centre … Even if to keep his job, he wants to react, the Yoruba culture does not allow that insult from him. And someday, he will pay back.” Asked by Jimi Disu whether Onanuga was going to be attacked with charms, Bode George said: “Ní’lè Yorùbá [‘In Yoruba land’], it’s not impossible. … Tó bá n rìn kó … maa wòtún maa wòsì [‘When he’s walking, he should be looking right and looking left.’]”
To defend Obasanjo, some simply invoked the proverb, “Focus on the message, not the messenger.” For example, in a 24 November, 2024 article titled, “Shouldn’t the messenger and the message deserve equal attention?”, in the Nigerian Tribune, Bolanle Bolawole asked: “[What] do you think of the relentless and vitriolic assault hauled at President Tinubu by former President Olusegun Obasanjo? … Presidential aides like Sunday Dare and Bayo Onanuga have responded in kind. … At issue here is the same problem of the messenger and the message. Should we, because of the messenger, discountenance the message? Shouldn’t we dispassionately side-step the messenger and painstakingly consider his message?”
Moreover, in a 30 November, 2024 article titled “The message, not the messanger!”, in Vanguard, Muyiwa Adetiba said: “Part of his strengths is that he [Obasanjo] knows what is good and says it boldly and bluntly; only that he was too arbitrary and too consumed with messianic self-importance to do the things he now says when he was in power. That is why we must focus on his message and not on him.” Implicit here is the admission that Obasanjo is fundamentally flawed.
Just as he did to Tinubu last month, Obasanjo, on 9 January, 2015, excoriated then-President Goodluck Jonathan. In response, Gentle Jonathan said with innuendo: “Some people, including those with big names, are hiding under some clogs and creating a lot of problems in this country. They are making provocative statements that will set this country ablaze. How can someone tell me that such people are senior citizens. They are not senior citizens and they can never be. They are ordinary motor park touts.”
Further upbraiding Obasanjo, Rueben Abati, the Special Adviser (Media & Publicity) to President Jonathan, remarked on 14 February, 2015: “We find the false claims and allegations reportedly made against President Goodluck Jonathan by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo on Saturday in Abeokuta very odious and repugnant. As we have had cause to say before, it is most regrettable indeed that a man like Chief Obasanjo, who should know better, chooses to repeatedly, wantonly, and maliciously impugn the integrity of a sitting President of his country for the primary purpose of self-promotion. … It is … completely senseless, irrational and out of place for Chief Obasanjo, who still claims to belong to the same party as the President, to accuse President Jonathan of plotting to win the rescheduled presidential elections by ‘hook or crook’ and planning to plunge the nation into crisis if he loses the election.”
Admonitorily, in a 2 January, 2023 interview on Channels Television, the well-respected Professor Bolaji Akinyemi said, in response to Obasanjo’s obtrusiveness: “[Once] you have occupied that position of President and you have served your term, please go home and be like General Gowon, be like General Abdulsalaam. Just be quiet. You’ve had your term … and let others get on. But for you to create problems for us and then you come back and you present yourself as a problem solver, I find it difficult to swallow. I know there are people saying ignore the messenger and just focus on the message. I’m sorry, I’m a political scientist; that doesn’t rub with me.” As this column has said before, an otherwise good message can be weaponised and put to mischievous and harmful use by a terrible messenger. Ignoring the messenger and focusing on the message, in such a situation, may therefore amount to collaborating in the perpetuation of evil.
Defending Obasanjo is a herculean task; and it’s almost impossible to defend him without first acknowledging his inescapable infractions or inexcusable misdeeds. Moreover, the Yoruba principle that “It’s not all clothes that we dry in the sun” is noteworthy with respect to Obasanjo’s unrestrained criticisms. The idea is that rather than simply making some clothes dry, the sun can have negative effects on them. Above all, a Yoruba proverb admonishes: “An elder is quick to see, but slow to speak.” (Àgbàlagbà ma n yá’jú ni; àgbàlagbà kìí yá’nu.) Obasanjo doesn’t seem to believe in this principle.
