Earlier in the second quartet of this year, I was invited by a major British peer-reviewed academic journal hosted by publishing conglomerate, Taylor and Francis, to review John Iliffe’s recent biography of Olusegun Obasanjo, which he entitled, Obasanjo, Nigeria and the World.
Earlier in the second quartet of this year, I was invited by a major British peer-reviewed academic journal hosted by publishing conglomerate, Taylor and Francis, to review John Iliffe’s recent biography of Olusegun Obasanjo, which he entitled, Obasanjo, Nigeria and the World.
My quick instinct was to turn down the invitation, which came about a mere two weeks after I vowed in a piece in which I rightly called Olusegun Obasanjo a scourge that afflicts Nigeria, that the said piece would be the last thing that I will print or cause to be printed on or about the man.
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By way of full disclosure, that vow derived from my personal aversion for Olusegun Obasanjo’s widely known repugnant personality and stupendous moral and ethical deficiencies. I subsequently reversed my vow on second thought and proceeded to accept the invitation to review the book. Of course, I read and wrote a balanced review of the book. But thereafter, I promptly rescinded that vow altogether. I will get to why I did anon.
Iliffe’s detailed book struck a chord in me. Going by the disclosure he made in the book’s Preface, it is evident that its impact on me is not exactly the one he may have envisaged that it would have on readers. Hear him: “In this book I have tried to understand General Obasanjo, which I believe to be the chief task of a biographer…I have not approached him in writing the book…he is a busy man who has never been slow to tell his own story in print. I hope, however, that it will be clear to him and others that I write with respect.”
All of his caution and respect for his subject notwithstanding, the detailed narrative he weaved in the book from “mainly published sources, especially Nigerian newspapers and political memoirs, as well as recently released FCO documents in Britain” gave me the first opportunity to behold—in one neat package—Olusegun Obasanjo’s center-stage role in Nigeria’s body politic over an extended period of time, albeit, with neither meaningful, nor durable progress as outcome to show for it.
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It also gave me cause to affirm a couple of convictions that I reached over the long course of time since I began to follow his exploits as a public figure, i.e. that indeed, he is one of the biggest troubles with the Nigeria project, and that until he is rightly put aside, the legitimate task to restructure Nigeria and put it on the path of progress and development will not begin in earnest.
My presumption is that while he did not set out to do just that, Iliffe eventually chronicled and put in a single package, all the pig-headed activities and rough-shod efforts made by one individual, a bully, since 1976, to hold the destinies and progress of distinct peoples, hostage in the name of his self-assigned single-minded loyalty to the unity of the contraption called Nigeria.
In the pursuit of his self-assigned endeavor to perpetuate dysfunctional unitarism in the Nigeria project, Olusegun Obasanjo has continuously squandered enormous public funds and indulged himself on every resource and wealth that abound in the land in a left-right-front-back-and-center style and in the most rabid and gluttonous manner. The double tragedy about it is that he is still going on and on, and we have let him continue.
That brings me to why, after I was invited to review his biography, I rescinded my vow to wish Olusegun Obasanjo away by not writing or publishing anything any more on him. What I saw in that book has sufficiently given me cause to conclude that each one of us—the educated and right-thinking amongst us—has the moral obligation to chase this man away from our public arena where he has undeservedly inflicted untoward violations on us.
Some samplers of what I deduced from the book must suffice here to buttress the rationale for my about-face and convey my convictions to people of kindred spirit amongst us. I discerned that at the end of the Nigeria-Biafra war in 1970, there emerged crop of individuals who are clueless in every sense of the word but whose claims to relevance in Nigeria’s political economy center specifically on their loyalty to the army and the unity of the contraption that Nigeria is. It is heart-breaking that the rest of us have allowed them to elevate an abstract mantra to the pedestal of a Golden Grail, which they use to hoodwink and brutalize us.
The said individuals can be categorized into two tiers. The first tier included Murtala Mohammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Theophilus Danjuma, Joseph Garba and the rest of them who came to prominence from their role in that war, which they zealously prosecuted as an antidote for what they perceived as Igbo menace in Nigeria.
The second tier included the likes of Ibrahim Babangida, Muhammadu Buhari, Babatunde Idiagbon, Sani Abacha, Mamman Vatsa, and others. For individuals in this second tier, that war was a rite of passage into the club to terminate Igbo menace.
It came to pass that this crop has held sway ever since the first tier claimed control of state power in the Nigeria project in 1975. To them, the project and the wealth and resources that abound in it, even the peoples who were forced to constitute it are the spoils of the war they waged and won over the Igbo. At no time has anyone of them looked back as they loot and hold sway all in the name of sustaining unity in the project.
Olusegun Obasanjo became the most visible face of the first tier sequel to its ouster of Yakubu Gowon from control of state power in 1975. He subsequently took charge by default in 1976 after Murtala Mohammed, who was also the most ambitious and brazen member of the tier was killed in an abortive coup d’état.
Steadily, and by 1978—a mere two years after he emerged as the pre-eminent dictator in 1976—Olusegun Obasanjo’s true character as a “domineering” bully began to manifest prominently in public life. Iliffe writes about “evidence of extensive corruption within the regime” he headed coming “to light, implicating Yar’Adua in seeking payment for awarding contracts for new ships, two senior public figures in receiving commissions from suppliers to FESTAC, two Commissioners for Industries in demanding kick-backs from the establishment of a motor assembly plant, several individuals close to the government in illegal foreign exchange transactions, and the regime as a whole in lavish award of contracts during its last weeks in office.
By his own account, Obasanjo had sold all his shareholdings when he became head of state. Diplomats reported him to be notoriously corrupt, but, (sic) if so, he was remarkably discreet about it, for no hard evidence has appeared”. But for Wikileaks and other revelations that stand as evidence of Olusegun Obasanjo’s capacity and inclinations for graft and corruption, Iliffe could have been writing about the period, 1999-2007.
[To be continued]
E. C. Ejiogu, PhD, is a political sociologist. He is the author of The Roots of Political Instability in Nigeria, published recently by Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
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