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Criticising Olusegun Obasanjo By I am a critic of President Olusegun Obasanjo and his government. And rightly so. This engagement is likely to intensify in tone and frequency as the year 2003 approaches. But I am Obasanjo's critic, not because he is struggling to free himself from the power blocs that brought him to office, construct an independent political bloc and invade the western power-bloc. The logic of his position compels him to do so; he has the right to do so; and he is in the position to do so. I am critical of him not because there is a plan to present him for re-election in 2003. Obasanjo is most likely to be better than most of his potential opponents. I am critical of General Olusegun Obasanjo in his position as current head of post-military transition on two grounds. First the performance of the transition is grossly below expectation from the premise of our people's minimum needs; and secondly, there are powerful political forces in the country which would like to extend this transition, or even make it permanent. This has to be opposed. I hope we know that this post-military transition may continue beyond 2003 with or without Obasanjo himself. A restructured Nigeria, in the popular-democratic and equitocratic sense of the term, has to come into being before the next presidential election. That will be the definitive end of the post-military transition.
My self-assigned role as Obasanjo critic notwithstanding, I hold that there are rules which must guide political criticism in general; and the more public the subject of criticism, the more scrupulously the rules of criticism must be followed. Obasanjo should benefit from these rules, two of which are: the ethical rule and the rule of political responsibility. The latter requires that Nigerian critics speak and write as Nigerians, committed to Nigeria and having a "stake" in the survival and progress of the country. Nigerian critics should not proceed as if they are merely doing a job or practising the art of criticism. The ethical rule, in the main, requires that we avoid attacking our subject as a person, or speculating on his or her private motives. Only public acts of omission and commission are legitimate issues for criticism. Critics should differentiate between the public sphere and the private domain. But we should admit that there is a problem here, the lines between the public and the private are sometimes not clear. In practical life, we often have to deal with issues that straddle the dividing line between the public and the private. It is known, for instance, that President Obasanjo is a born-again Christian. Normally, religion should be a private affair in this country. But then, each of the president's public speeches and statements, since he came into office, has been punctuated and laced with religious invocations and exhortations. In the circumstances, it will be legitimate to regard the president's religion as public affairs subject to legitimate public criticism to the extent of his innovations and exhortations.
Yet another problem. The novelist, Frederick Forsyth, has said that a public figure's life can be divided into three spheres: the public, the private and the secret. Forsyth may not have been original, but I first read this taxonomy in his collection of fictional stories No Comesback. An application of the general principles sketched above leads me to suggest that critics are allowed a free hand in the first sphere, but they are to leave the second sphere severely alone. The third sphere, that is, the secret sphere, is problematic, because it is a complex mix. One way of dealing with the problem is to sub-divide the secret into the political and the non-political, merge the former with the public sphere and the latter with the private sphere. This will bring us back to our original dualism, the public and the private. To illustrate: if we discover that President Obasanjo has signed a secret military pact with a foreign country, or has secretly ordered a military or para-military crackdown on his opponents, or perceived opponents of the state, we are obliged to bring this to the open, and criticise it. On the contrary, if we discover that the president has secretly met with his friends to "cool off" at a time and in a place we least expected him, we should leave the man alone.
Beyond these rules, I believe that every political critic of President Obasanjo will benefit from some knowledge of how this personage came into being politically. He did not descend on us from the blues. If a political biography of President Olusegun Obasanjo were to be sketched, it would, most probably, start on January 15, 1966. Not that he, then a Major, took part in the first military attempt to overthrow the government of Nigeria which was staged that Saturday morning. On the contrary, he took part in suppressing it, thereby helping the second attempt to succeed. The first attempt was led by three Nigerian army majors: Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Emmanuel Ifeajuna and Adewale Ademoyega. The second attempt, initiated as soon as the first attempt was started, succeeded on January 18. It was led by the official head of the Nigerian Army, Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi, who then became the first Head of Federal Military Government and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon who became Ironsi's Chief of Staff, Army. Obasanjo's specific role, according to the information volunteered by him and later confirmed, was that he persuaded Nzeogwu, his close friend and leader of the rebels in Kaduna, to surrender to Ironsi. Obasanjo's argument was that the rebels had achieved their principal objective, namely, the overthrow of the civilian administration and that to continue the struggle to assume power was to ask for a civil war which, he believed, the rebels did not desire.
About 18 months later, Obasanjo, then commanding the army garrison in Ibadan, helped to frustrate the attempt by a radical detachment of the Biafran Armed Forces to link up with presumed sympathisers in the West and Lagos and simultaneously overthrow Ojukwu (Enugu) and Gowon (Lagos) and achieve the original objectives of the January boys. Obasanjo did this directly, by military action, and indirectly by deceiving those who thought he was a sympathiser. The roles of Obasanjo in these two events, the majors' rebellion of January 1966 and Biafra's attempted incursion in August 1967, are crucial in understanding President Obasanjo politically today. Twenty-eight months later, in January 1970, Olusegun Obasanjo, now a Colonel and Commander of the Third Division of the Nigerian Army, received the unconditional surrender of the Biafran Armed Forces in the field. Obasanjo's roles in the termination of the war and re-unification of Nigeria have largely shaped his attitudes to Nigeria (paternalism and messianism) and to eastern part of the country (contempt).
Subsequent high points in the trajectory of Obasanjo's political history include: his appointment as Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters (1975), following the coup led by middle-rank officers; appointment as Head of State (February 1976), following the assassination of General Murtala Mohammed, the decisive and ruthless manner in which he dealt with those found guilty of coup plotting (May 1976), the brutal and insensitive methods by which he handled the Ali-Must-Go uprising by university students (1978); his political decision to hand over power to Alhaji Shehu Shagari (October 1979); the publication of his war memoirs, My Command and biography of his friend Nzeogwu(1987); his statement that Moshood Abiola was not the "messiah" we had been waiting for (1993); his insistence on coming back to Nigeria from the safety of Europe (1995) even when he had been warned that Abacha would kill him on the spurious charge of treason. These high points, among others, should provide some necessary background knowledge for the critics of President Obasanjo.
Finally, President Olusegun Obasanjo, as I have said, is a born-again Christian. He was literally snatched from the jaws of death to become the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. He therefore believes that his life was spared for a particular assignment of human redemption. Flowing from this, he believes that, in the affairs of mortals, he is infallible. Beyond that, Obasanjo believes that neither his life, nor his regime can be terminated, unless God wishes. This, for Obasanjo, is not just a homily. It is a practical article of faith. Critics of the incumbent President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria should therefore understand the subject of their criticism. December 2001
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