May 27, 2007
Give it to expired President Olusegun Obasanjo: the man has a promising career as a dramatist. He spent most of the last week of his tenure weeping and yapping, two attributes of a man of theatre.
At a ceremony to bequeath the chapel at Aso Rock to
Jonathan Goodluck, the president, according to media
accounts, broke down and wept for a good twenty
minutes. His audience must have looked on, in
amazement and embarrassment, at the rare display of
presidential sorrowfulness.
They must have wondered what kind of pain plagued
the president’s soul. Mr. Obasanjo did not keep them
guessing. After collecting himself, he confessed
that his paroxysm owed to the absence of his late
dear wife, Stella, to help him pack up and move
his stuff from the nation’s number one address.
It’s a good thing that Mr. Obasanjo cleared that up.Had he failed to do so, busybodies like me would have
had a field day. We would have ascribed his
tearfulness to presidential blues, specifically to a
condition called acute withdrawal syndrome (aws). We
would even have speculated that the president dreaded
the prospect of returning to a mortal mode. After
eight years of living as a godhead perched atop Mount
Aso, life among mere humans must seem bleak and
insufferable.
Coming on the heels of his extraordinary lachrymal
drama, the president began to make sordid valedictory
revelations to the Nigerian people. Appearing on a
special edition of his occasional live television
interviews, Obasanjo turned in a prize-winning
performance. He declared that, contrary to the
perception that he engineered the failed bid to alter
the constitution to enable him to run for a third
term, he was not interested in perpetuation. Had he
wanted to stay on, he boasted, he would have easily
had his way. How? Oh, he would simply have appealed to
God. And, for the information of his listeners, he
disclosed that God had never once denied him anything
he coveted.
And it wasn’t the most astounding utterance from the
president. Ever the diarrheic speaker, he said new
clues had enabled the police to zero in on the
mastermind of former Attorney General Bola Ige’s
assassination had been unmasked. The police were
pursuing the lead that an incarcerated drug baron had
ordered Ige’s gruesome murder.
Obasanjo also inveighed against Vice President Atiku
Abubakar, his favorite foe and scourge. Atiku, claimed
the president, had once colluded with Ghali Na’Abba,
erstwhile Speaker of the House of Representatives, to
effect the president’s impeachment. Atiku allegedly
handed the speaker a wand of cash to be distributed at
the rate of $5,000 to each willing legislator. As if
that alleged act was not perfidious enough, Atiku,
according to Obasanjo, also enlisted the offices of
sorcerers to arrange the president’s death. Why would
Atiku do that? To enable the vice president to capture
the presidency, stupid!
A day after making the stunning claims, the president
received a torrent of darts and barbs. First, Mrs.
Funsho Adegbola, the late Bola Ige’s oldest daughter,
and Professor Wole Soyinka, one of the man’s closest
friends, tore the president’s new theory to shreds.
Both daughter and friend scolded the president,
accusing him of mischief and malice.
Standing up for the slain lawyer, Adegbola and Soyinka
berated the president for his veiled imputation of
incompetence to the ex-minister. The president’s
uncharitable comments dishonored the memory of a man
whose profile of public service was exemplary. In a
cutting retort, Adegbola said her late father’s ghost
was haunting the president’s conscience.
Atiku was just as direct and unsparing. Questioningthe president’s profession of Christianity, Atiku
suggested that Obasanjo was obsessed with sorcery and
diabolism. Part of his rebuttal read: “The President
has exposed his own mindset as one that is covered by
the cobwebs of juju or occultism.” He continued: “It
is on record that the President had never in the past
denied his association with deadly secret societies.”
Atiku advised the next occupant of Aso Rock to
spiritually cleanse the abode to make it habitable.
Atiku also accused Obasanjo of hypocrisy on the issue
of bribery. He insisted that the president was the
practiced hand at doling out generous sums to induce
legislators to do his illicit bidding. He alleged that
the president had periodically bribed legislators to
remove their officers who resisted presidential
meddlesomeness. He specifically charged Obasanjo with
paying 50 million naira each to lawmakers willing to
endorse the unpopular third term bid.
The fierce raillery against Obasanjo served as a
foretaste of the president’s life effective tomorrow.
For almost eight years, he had owned the public forum.
His every fancy and utterance, however silly or inane,
was guaranteed indulgence. Even when he spoke
hypocritically, or acted in a manner unbecoming of an
occupant of such exalted office, there was a retinue
of fawning sycophants to shield him from the truth.
The days of flattery are over.
Obasanjo had better brace himself, for the ride is
bound to be bumpier from now on. All the unanswered,
or incompletely addressed, questions of his presidency
are likely to be posed again. A man who brought a
controversial stamp on the nation's public realm
cannot expect to slide into an easy retirement.
Beginning tomorrow, Nigerians will begin to ask hard
questions of this president, and to ask them with a
relentlessness and directness to which Obasanjo has
never been accustomed. There will be questions about
some of his choices and policies as president. How did
he shepherd the oil sector? What did he know about,
and what role play, in the orgy of destruction
unleashed on Anambra by Chris Uba and Oyo by Lamidi
Adedibu? How clean were his hands as he managed the
windfall from the spike in oil prices?
He can expect new questions, and insinuations, about
the unsolved high profile murders that took place at
his watch. Yes, the ghosts of Bola Ige, A.K. Dikibo
and Harry Marshall, among others, will stalk his step.
Is he going to hibernate, or would he dare travel
freely? He can expect to get a true measure of what
Nigerians think about him and his presidency. For
eight years, his handlers had drummed messianic
plaudits into his ears. They told him that Nigeria’s
fortunes were tied to him, indeed that he and his
nation were interchangeable. Now stripped of the
accouterments of office, Obasanjo will get an
incontestable reckoning. If Nigerians hold him as a
hero, they will cheer him at every public appearance.
But if they see him as a poseur who deepened their
malaise, then trust them to boo and jeer.
I wonder if the president’s tears of last week were
triggered, in part at least, by presentiments of a
doleful experience out in the cold. I wonder.
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