When the history of these tempestuous times in Nigeria comes to be written, December 2013 will go down as The Month of Missives.
The blizzard was set off by an 18-page missive from former President Olusegun Obasanjo to Dr Goodluck Jonathan, whose dizzy rise from the obscurity of deputy governor of Bayelsa State to vice president, en route to becoming president, Obasanjo had orchestrated. Obasanjo had in the same manouevre railroaded Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, governor of Katsina State, into the office of President
Settling for these men when far more capable aspirants were available and willing will forever cast a pall on Obasanjo’s judgment.
To return to the missive: It was vintage Obasanjo – blunt as a punch to the nose. I rather like the earthy Yoruba expression a correspondent employed to describe the matter, but I cannot reproduce it here even in loose translation, this being a newspaper for the entire family, enjoined to dwell only on whatsoever is of good report.
Let us just say that my correspondent likened the missive in all its bluntness to a kick in the groin.
Other than the charge that the Jonathan Administration was training a squadron of snipers at a secret location, there was nothing in Obasanjo’s missive that the attentive audience does not encounter daily in the newspapers, in the so-called social media, and in their workaday lives.
Shortly after Dr Jonathan took office, I asked one of his top advisers whether he was up to the task. His reply: “Without hesitation, no.” And the adviser reeled out instance upon instance that led him to that judgment. Several senior officials close to Dr Jonathan also concurred in that evaluation when I put the same question to them.
Given the special scrutiny my passport has received in the past three years upon my arrival at Murtala Muhammed Airport, I have good reason to believe, as Obasanjo has charged, that the Administration maintains a Watch List. Some prominent media figures of my acquaintance are also often subjected to the same wanton attention at Passport Control
Many have argued that even if the missive was on target, as indeed it was, the author was not morally qualified to issue it; that many of the grave deficiencies he identified in the Jonathan record could be traced to his own tenure, and that he had not merely set a ghastly example for his estranged protégé, he had also guided him to follow it through. The pupil, they maintain, has learned only too well from his tutor.
There is some merit to that reasoning.
Still, doesn’t every parent expect his children to transcend his or her own inadequacies, to succeed where the parent failed, and altogether to chalk up a superior record of achievement? That, I suspect is the basis of Obasanjo’s disenchantment, that Dr Jonathan has not measured up to his expectations. It is now clear that he did not know his “son” well enough to nurse such expectations
The sandbagging proved too much even for the usually meek pupil, and he has struck back using every available platform and occasion – in a BBC interview from Paris, in Nairobi, Kenya, and at church services, naming no names but leaving no doubt about whom he has in mind – those who regard not just the Presidency but the entire country as their personal bedroom.
The centerpiece of his response was a blockbuster missive designed to counter almost point by point Obasanjo’s charges. It is competent in part but perfunctory overall. Polemically, there is little to recommend it. In substance, it was less than a robust rebuttal. I doubt whether it changed any minds.
What must be seen as a far more damaging response to Obasanjo’s withering missive came in the form of another missive said to have been written by his daughter Iyabo, most recently a “distinguished senator,” to employ the inflated appellation members of Nigeria’s upper house of the National Assembly have bestowed on themselves to match their obscene, self- assigned material privileges.
For sheer scurrility, it would be hard to match. In fact, I am almost prepared to state that, if it is confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that she wrote the missive, it will go down as one of the most contumacious ever written by a child to a parent. It is perfused with contempt, ridicule, scorn, and loathing abhorrence of the most visceral kind.
There are reasons aplenty for doubting that she wrote the missive published by Vanguard Newspapers. The missive was typewritten, not written in longhand, the intimate, personal format one would expect most children to employ in writing to their parents. The closing line lists her academic qualifications, as if it was a letter of reference or a job application. Surely, her father would know that she has doctorates in veterinary medicine and public health?
Nor was the missive signed. This particular omission may have been designed to allow the writer to deny authorship. But does it not also suggest that Dr Obasanjo may not have written it?
Much of what the missive contains about how Obasanjo relates to members of his family has long been in the public domain. Anyone who has read the memoirs of Iyabo Obasanjo’s mother or her numerous press interviews and has some familiarity with gossip about the family could have written that missive.
So, judging strictly by the rules of documentary analysis, it is not proven that Dr Obasanjo wrote it. If she wrote it, did she intend it for publication? And if she did not write it, who did?
To the extent that she has not disavowed the missive, reasonable people may reasonably conclude that she must have written it. But if she wrote it, why has she not come out to say so?
If Dr Obasanjo confirmed that she wrote the missive, she would have assured for herself a lasting place in the annals of infamy. If she repudiated it, she would have spurred those who say they have proof that she wrote it to come out with it and destroy whatever ambition she might still be nursing.
In the circumstance, she would seem to have calculated, or more likely been led to believe that keeping mum is the best strategy for damage control.
That, at any rate, is the theory I have come to accept.
As the nation reeled from its impact, the blizzard of missives was upgraded to a veritable maelstrom by yet another missive, this one from the plush and sedate executive suites of the Central Bank, courtesy of its governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.
Some U.S. $50 billion or N8 trillion in oil export earnings, the missive addressed directly to President Jonathan charged, had not been remitted to the federal exchequer by the notoriously opaque Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Back when the trouble with Nigeria was not money but how to spend it, the charge would have been explosive indeed. Now that the government is reportedly broke and the air saturated with allegations of official thieving, the charge is nothing if not incendiary.
The NNPC moved with uncharacteristic speed to explain that the gap identified by CBN represented remittances to other agencies of the Federal Government. Sanusi stuck to his missive and renewed the charge.
In the end he conceded that just US$10 billion remains unaccounted for. That is still a great deal of money, but a far cry from the amount alleged to be missing, in the popular imagination diverted to private pockets.
When principal officials of the treasurer to the Federal Government and the bank of bankers cannot count, when they are unfamiliar with the mechanism for reporting oil receipts, how much confidence can the public invest in all those figures they ritually churn out?
Finally, I bring up another missive, a 12-page excoriation of Obasanjo that qualifies only as a minor footnote, and a contemptible one at that. Its author is Ameh Ebute, who played a part in bargaining away the victory of his party’s candidate, Chief MKO Abiola, in the 1993 presidential election.
If Ebute and his gang had not betrayed the sovereign will of the people as expressed emphatically in that election, if they had stood firm, there would have been no Shonekan Interim, no Abacha, no Obasanjo redux and probably no Jonathan.
