By

M. Braide (PhD)

Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

Quite frankly, a massive abyss exists between General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo’s reality and the everyday reality of most of us, his worshipful, obedient, very respectful, sycophantic, honey-tongued, halleluyah-singing, masochistically compliant, peace-loving, emotionally traumatised, and shell-shocked subjects. Incidentally, by the last count, General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo, civilian President and Commander-in-Chief of the strike-threatening rank and file of the Police and Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has been out of his duty post some eighty-two (82) times in the past thirty-three (33) months, on official assignments. These translate to just over two (2) trips per month on the average, or about seven (7) days per 22 work days per month out of Nigeria, or about 34% of valuable executive time spent overseas, supposedly in hot pursuit of foreign friends (coincidentally, mostly non-African) and hopefully, honest potential foreign investors (in Nigeria?), all in the name of reversing the damage done to Nigeria by a long succession of impudently opinionated, pseudo-patriotic, self-anointed messianic military politicians since January 15, 1966, including the period spanning between February 13, 1976, and October 1, 1979. Furthermore, his strange show of solidarity with Robert Mugabe, the Megalomaniac of Harare, has summarily demolished any residual illusions of our ever attracting any further meaningful foreign investments into Nigeria, for the remainder of the duration of his soon-to-expire tenure in Aso Rock Villa, Abuja. The above sample testimonies of General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo’s reality evoke both alarm and amusement at the same time.

We can now assert, with the benefit of hindsight, that, following the constitutionally treasonable mutiny and coup d’état that terminated the government of Right Honourable Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, and the successful crushing of its attempted overthrow, the democratically elected government of the 1^st Republic, through its Senate President, formally handed over political power to the Nigerian Army on trust, in view of the then prevailing emergency in the country. Barely six (6) months afterwards, another group of mutineers violently displaced the leadership of the custodians of that hand over mandate of the Senate of the First Republic, plunged the country into a senseless civil war, and commenced to impose their own version of pragmatic dictatorship for about nine (9) years under Lieutenant Colonel, later Major General, later General Yakubu Gowon, with no further obligation or reference to the original mandate of authority, given to his predecessor by the government of the First Republic.

Sequel to a peaceful in-house rebellion (palace coup) that was overtly chaperoned, pampered and mentored by General Gowon’s war-time field commanders (GOCs) and their trusted brigade and battalion commanders, apparently in envy of their colleagues and course mates who were then Military Governors and other high-level government appointees, the successor military junta, in which then Brigadier Olusegun Obasanjo, former GOC 3^rd Marine Commando Division, former Director, Nigerian Army Corps of Engineers, and former Federal Commissioner of Works, was at first, the military Vice-President, as a one-star general, and later, the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief, as a four-star general (all within a span of four years), predicated Nigeria’s foreign policy on the notion of a so-called "Afrocentric" diplomacy: a rather quixotic and cock-eyed rationalisation of Nigeria’s self-worth globally, since the mid-1970s to date. Out of the blues (and just like that), Nigeria became the champion of the cause of all Blacks and Africans worldwide, nationalising multi-national businesses in the country, all in the name of a wishy-washy and patently Machiavellian "indigenisation" and nationalisation philosophy that was, at best, founded on sheer sentiment, populism, crass opportunism and greed; in the spirit of a hazy and bogus brotherhood.

Indeed, a curious strain of Pan Africanism was carefully fabricated, synthesised, force-fed on Nigerians, and subsequently propagated worldwide by the Nigerian local military elite of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, at times for the sake of blindly confronting perceived external threats by means of economic blackmail, in others, as an expression of a "fatherchristmasish" diversionary moral support they arrogated to themselves to provide for needy fellow African countries. As a matter of fact, Nigeria was metaphorically and literally conferred with the status of a frontline state during the liberation struggles in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Nigeria made significant financial, material and moral contributions to the liberation struggles in Southern African, particularly in Zimbabwe.

But despite all the sacrifices that Nigeria made, Zimbabwe has consistently shown complete contempt for Nigeria. Time after time, state-owned media in Zimbabwe blatantly propagate anti-Nigeria news, views and commentaries. Furthermore, the government of Zimbabwe seems not to place any value or relevance to Nigeria's pivotal role in ensuring the success of its war of independence. This same ingratitude, or benign reluctance to recognise Nigeria’s support, has often been expressed by various other African beneficiaries of Nigeria’s self-imposed quasi-messianic role over the past quarter of a century, ever since General (Chief) Obasanjo’s first term of office as Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Could it possibly be that those countries, like Zimbabwe, did not actually receive the costly assistance Nigerians thought their rulers sent on their behalf to their needy fellow African and Black brothers? May be, they were short-changed by our rulers. Who knows? We may never know.

In 1991, Zimbabwe hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Zimbabwe, in which the Harare Declaration (on democracy, human rights and good governance) was adopted. The Harare Declaration was applied to suspend Pakistan from the Commonwealth when President (General) Musharraf overthrew the democratically elected government of that country. In 1995, the principles of the Harare Declaration formed the basis of the decision that suspended Nigeria from the Commonwealth, after the judicial murder of the Ogoni Nine. The 1995 meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government took place in New Zealand, when General Olusegun Obasanjo was in jail. Ironically, in that same meeting of Heads of Government of the Commonwealth, it was President Mugabe of Zimbabwe, whom General (Chief) Obasanjo now stoutly defends, that told a world press conference that Nigeria was irredeemably positioned on the path of self-destruction (just as Mugabe himself has now chosen to position Zimbabwe on the express way of political and economic extinction). And so, by Mugabe’s logic, Nigeria should be expelled or, at least, suspended from the Commonwealth. That was Robert Mugabe in 1995, while General Obasanjo was in prison, accused of harbouring the satanic thought of still wanting to rule Nigeria, long after he had so graciously, patriotically, God-fearingly, kindly and VOLUNTARILY handed over power to a civilian successor government that incidentally collapsed barely four years after his earth-shatteringly successful transition programme that, bye the way, completely disregarded the 1966 mandate of the Senate President of the 1^st Republic to the Nigerian Armed Forces.

Following Chief (General) Olusegun Obasanjo’s spirited defence of President Robert Mugabe at the just concluded CHOGM, a team, comprising President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, was assigned the task of appraising Zimbabwe's forthcoming presidential elections, and to make appropriate recommendations subsequently to the CHOGM. Furthermore, Nigeria was courteously offered the coveted privilege of hosting (at its own risk and expense) the next CHOGM to be held in 2003 (the politically magical year of the 4^th Republic), at Abuja. Meanwhile, and probably to the consternation and amusement of Queen Elizabeth II and other fellow Heads of Government in attendance at that meeting, Chief (General) Olusegun Obasanjo has a trailer load of apparently intractable home-grown nightmares that require his urgent attention and speedy resolution. Instead, he has chosen to immerse himself deep into the Zimbabwean disorder, openly fraternising with, aiding and abetting a civilian despot who, despite all of Nigeria’s open-mindedness and generosity, persistently showed unabashed hostility towards the Government and people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, over the past fifteen years or so.

For reasons that are best understood and appreciated by him and him alone, President Obasanjo has chosen to be the friend-in-need of The Megalomaniac of Harare. Understandably, most African and/or Black rulers who vehemently resisted the call for sanctions on Zimbabwe at the CHOGM in Australia, are themselves the very promoters and bastions of all manner of anti-democratic practices, blatantly intimidating their political opponents from time to time, and chronically addicted to crude authoritarian habits, back home in their respective countries. And so, a vote against Mugabe could invariably turn out to be politically suicidal for them. That is the clear signal from the last CHOGM in Australia: The emergence of a global cabal of arrogantly undemocratic gerontocracies of Africa and the 3^rd World, led by Nigeria’s President.

Does General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo really look forward to any objectionable outcomes after the forthcoming presidential elections in Nigeria next year? If so, does General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo expect that he may be spared the stigma and pain of being ostracised, in line with the Zimbabwean paradigm? Why is General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo investing so much time, exertion and funds on the Robert Mugabe Project? Nigerians know that Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola, on which Nigerian rulers spent tremendous resources to liberate, have frequently treated Nigeria and Nigerians with contempt, thereby raising doubts about the reasonableness of Nigeria’s Afrocentric foreign policy postures. In other words, besides merely declaring Africa as the centre-piece of Nigeria’s foreign policy, what exactly does the country stand to gain by its blind and somewhat doctrinaire commitment to a seemingly uninformed and half-baked expression of diplomatic exuberance by a military junta that was in vogue, some 25 years ago? Valuable and somewhat scarce resources that could very well have been spent to develop Nigeria were/are unilaterally and painstakingly committed to the pursuit of tenuous foreign policy objectives hatched in the mid- 1970s, during General Obasanjo’s first term of office as the Head of State of Nigeria.

Ever since President Robert Mugabe got himself and his country into the on-going messy political crisis, Chief (General) Olusegun Obasanjo has been very busy, operating (once again) in his "eminent statesmen" mode, taking care of Mugabe’s knotty problems overseas, on behalf of Nigerians, without their consent. Only recently, and at the expense of the Nigerian treasury, Chief (General) Olusegun Obasanjo hosted a land reform dialogue between Great Britain and Zimbabwe in Abuja. More or less, Zimbabwe is a pariah state. For sure, Zimbabwe qualifies for sanctions under the Harare Declaration. However, whatever submissions the British might make now, it would be quite easy to misconstrue such moves as being racially-biased (against Black Zimbabweans).

General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo has worked tirelessly on behalf of Robert Mugabe. He led a Black lobby in Australia to defeat the British-led campaign for stiff economic and diplomatic sanctions against Zimbabwe, a country whose politics has progressively degenerated as a result of sustained state-sponsored terrorism over the past couple of years. Why has General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo chosen to be the mouth-piece of Robert Mugabe whose international image, right now, is lower than General Sani Abacha’s, post-Ken Saro-Wiwa? But why are sanctions not imposed on Zimbabwe now, just like Nigeria was suspended in 1995 because of human rights violations? This is the Catch-22 of the matter!

It seems like General (Chief) Obasanjo strongly believes that the mere rituals of political party registration, electioneering, partisan campaigns, casting votes, counting votes and declaring winners (or losers), as has always been the case in Nigeria, constitute the totality of "appropriate" democracy for Africans globally. That kind of thinking is at best naïve, or/and warped and/or simplistic. But at least, it gives us a hint or two about the thought processes of our President and Commander-in-Chief, who incidentally became 65 years old, while on official assignment in far away Australia, simultaneously antagonising Nigeria’s creditors and attracting potential foreign investors to Nigeria. This brings us to a major digression: How really old is General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria? Is he really 65 years old? If not, why not?

Well, for a start, if General (Chief) Mathew Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo (GCFR, alias OBJ) is 65 years old today, then he must have been born in 1937 AD. Therefore, when his close friend, Major C.K. Nzeogwu, assisted to destabilise the democratically elected civilian government of the day, which incidentally only just successfully hosted a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Lagos, Olusegun Obasanjo (then alias Omoba) must have been just 29 years old in 1966. By 1969, when he was the GOC of the 3^rd Marine Commando Division of the Nigerian Army, then Lt. Colonel Olu Obasanjo must have been only 32 years old. By 1976 when he reluctantly considered and reluctantly accepted being Nigeria’s Head of State, Obasanjo was only 39 years old. And by 1979 when General Obasanjo (rtd.) retired from active service and handed over power to civilian President Alhaji Shehu Shagari, he was only 42 years old; younger than 95% of State Governors today!

At this juncture we will conduct a simple mind experiment: Imagine a scenario in which the last CHOGM that was held in Australia had Sir Edward Heath (once again!) as the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Siaka Stephens for Sierra Leone, Indira Ghandi for India, Colonel Achempong for Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta for Kenya, Ian Smith for Zimbabwe, Julius Nyerere for Tanzania, Kamuzu Banda for Malawi, Idi Amin for Uganda (Which reminds me: Can Field Marshal Idi Amin (rtd.) still be brought to justice, given his old age now, in line with on-going trials of similar culprits of crimes against humanity? I am just thinking. Saudi Arabia is "harbouring" him, we were told. Is there any Afghanistan-Taliban-Osama similarity here?) Of course at the recent CHOGM that was held in Australia, the Head of the Commonwealth was, and still is Queen Elizabeth II, and Nigeria was, and still is led by General (Chief) Obasanjo (rtd.) Please extend the above scenario to also accommodate a situation in which US President Jimmy Cater is the incumbent Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces, at war with global terrorism. Hairy! Very weird!

While in one setting of this unfolding paradox we have General Obasanjo nationalising British Petroleum (BP) into African Petroleum (AP), and Shell (Marketing) into National Oil & Chemicals (Nolchem), in brotherhood with Rhodesia, in another setting we have General (Chief) Obasanjo, retired now for some twenty-three (23 years), soliciting foreign investors from Britain, USA, Japan, EU, Far East etc to invest in Nigeria, where he is the President: The same Nigeria and the same General Obasanjo who once actualised the forced nationalisation of BP and Shell. The same General (Chief) Obasanjo that is in solidarity and brotherhood (again?) with Zimbabwe! Certainly, potential foreign investors will find this paradox rather interesting, refreshing and illuminating. The absurdity of the above scenario better clarifies the sort of "slow motion" reality that we live in Nigeria. A rather bizarre reality in which everything else changes with time, except Queen Elizabeth II and General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo.

Let us face facts: How many 29 years old Nigerians can claim to have coup-plotting 29 years old Majors as their "paddy man" today and not face a firing squad? How many 32 years old Nigerian soldiers are Lieutenant Colonels, not to dream of being GOCs? How many Nigerians in their mid-thirties can hallucinate about ever being a Federal Minister of Works and Housing today? How many 39 years old Nigerians will ever again be cajoled to kindly accept ruling their country, even when they claim to be reluctant? How many Nigerians like Dr. Beko Ransom-Kuti, or Chris Anyawu, or General Ishaya Bamaiyi that were/are brutalised for reasons of perceived breaches of prevailing state security (as defined by the incumbent) will ever find themselves being begged to transit directly from prison to Aso Rock Villa, Abuja? How many other former military Heads of State of Nigeria will have the unique privilege of regaining the keys to Aso Rock from their subordinates? (General (Dr.) Yakubu Gowon tried it and failed woefully in 1993, eighteen (18) years after his dethronement by a junta whose Vice-President was Obasanjo). How many Nigerians can get away with daylight state-sponsored terrorism of the Kalakuta kind, or boast of being the architect of some of our national icons of built-in inequity, inefficiency and/or failure like the Land Use Decree; NEPA, Kaduna Refinery; vehicle assembly plants; selective accelerated promotions; "un-touchability" of certain sacred cows; official policy double-speak; sporadic closures of universities; execution or persecution persons (like Generals Bissala and Gowon) that were vaguely indicted or even wrongly accused of treasonable acts, and still see themselves or be bandied about as indispensable? How many 42 years old Nigerians will ever have the historical privilege to voluntarily retire from their chosen profession at that age, hand over after defining the rules of business to an older person, and blissfully enjoy the dynamic inactivity of an expansive piece of land under the cover of farming, with a mouth-watering retinue of dirty rich serving and retired professional subordinates at their beck and call?

From all indications, General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo has been operating at a unique reality space, at a transcendental plane of laissez faire kampéism, relative omnipotence and guaranteed impunity, for over 50% of his life on this planet, ever since his 32^nd birthday, some 33 years ago, just like his trusted and loyal brigade and battalion commanders of the late-1970s like Generals Shehu Yar’Adua, Mohammadu Buhari, Tunde Idiagbon, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar, and a host of other later-day military politicians that emerged after his transition programme of the 1970s. It will be recalled that in his maiden speech, following the successful subversion of the 2^nd Republic, which General Olusegun Obasanjo "mid-wifed", Major General Mohammadu Buhari even claimed that his junta was in fact "an off-shoot of the Murtala-Obasanjo administration". It is obvious that General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo, by virtue of the very nature of the utopia in which he exists (and has been in, for the past 33 years or so of his life), must be completely out of touch with grassroots reality in Nigeria, for all practical intents and purposes, and probably for no fault of his.

March 2002