Does Obasanjo Mean Well?
By
Having had the opportunity to rule Nigeria both as military and civilian dictator, and now seeking to re-impose himself on Nigerians in bold
vindication of the enduring second-term, sit-tight, power-mania pandemic that has since afflicted our rulers, it has become necessary to ask as one of
Obasanjo's cheer-leaders did in his thoroughly hagiographic comments in the Nigerian media the other day: What really does Obasanjo want? Or put more pointedly:
What more does Obasanjo want in our now terribly impoverished Nigeria?
My answer to this question is quite simple: I hardly know! But I certainly know what he does not want. Quite clearly, he has not, by any stretch of the
imagination, the slightest intention of wishing to give Nigerians quality leadership that will put smiles on their faces, food on their tables, give them
security, shelter, roads to move on, and dignity and respect from the various members of the international community where Obasanjo had poured away millions of
petro-dollars visiting and fraternizing with them.
You see, I should be a fool to expect the growing gang of privileged, callous, leeching Nigerians presently flocking around Obasanjo to share my viewpoint. As
far as is evident, the man has been smart enough to get all of them properly "settled." And their callousness has become such that even if their next-door
neighbours are being choked and crushed by grinding poverty right under their nose, they would still have the presence of mind to come out and declare to a
terribly bewildered world that Nigeria, a country which the damnable rapacious drives of successive leaders have since turned into Dante's Inferno, has indeed
arrived its Promised Land. They may reel out Scripture passages to support their foul and offensive heresies as the naive Ife boy, "Deacon" Fani-Kayode, has
been doing in his gratuitous and wasteful media outings in the recent past, but it is quite clear to every sane being that those who provide support to
institutionalized iniquity will never escape in the day of the accompanying cascading calamity. It is both a divine and natural order.
After reading two particularly offensive articles recently, one by a certain Mr. Tajudeen Kareem (Personal Assistant to the Minister of state for
Communications), and the other by Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode (lately, bearing the tag of"deacon" of some Church or so), whatever I hope I had battled to muster about
Nigeria's likely survival in the near future immediately evaporated. Before now I had entertained the vague hope that my generation may have the rare favour of
witnessing the receding back of the seemingly perennial era of the locusts in Nigeria. But with insensate "deacons" like Fani-Kayode still jumping about town,
marketing their fatally contaminated "ware", such flicker of hopes has since gone into extinction.
I have no problems with anybody earning a living by marketing the re-imposition of someone who has no doubt been an integral part of Nigeria's perennial
problems, if such a marketer's seared conscience gives him leave to do so. But for goodness sake why not take some pains to make yourself believable? Must the
nation be daily insulted with clearly unintelligent lies about Obasanjo's "achievements" just because some fellows are desperate to earn a living? Is General
Obasanjo not worried that those he is paying to market him are on the contrary annoying Nigerians by trying to discredit the real and excruciating experiences
of suffering, impoverished Nigerians, experiences whose accentuation these past three years have given them indescribable nightmares? Imagine looking a terribly
famished child writhing with the biting pains of killing hunger straight in the face and declaring to him that you do not believe that he is hungry, that you
have spent millions or dollars feeding him these past few days, and that he is merely making up the story about his hunger. That is exactly what these
unconscionable men are doing to Nigerians!
At the end, my conclusion was easily realized: the Personal Assistant is one of the numerous parasites leeching on the country. The essays he is writing is his
way of showing the General that his boss is eternally loyal. By this, his boss is assured of reappointment once Obasanjo reconquers Nigerians to regain the
occupancy and control of Aso Rock. Of course the obsequious toady of a P.A. will not be forgotten. And then, the bazaar continues ad nauseam. As for Mr.
Fani-Kayode, I have the feeling that he is warming up to become one of Obasanjo's uncountable special advisers and assistants: those rowdy bunch of idle,
cringing fellows who are just earning salaries they never worked for, and whose only qualification for their job is that either them or their parents have been
saying some nice things about Obasanjo, like asking us to "vote for continuity" of misery . My fear though for the young deacon from If e is that Obasanjo
appears to have exhausted the names of areas that future appointees would be advising on or assisting him in. For instance, for want of an area in which he
would wish an appointee to "advise" him, because every imaginable term has been exhausted, Obasanjo has appointed somebody the "Special Adviser to the President
or' Presidential Matters"! Can you beat that?
One of the seemingly winning slogans with which Obasanjo was marketed before now was: "we know he means well." For sometime this appeared to work. The implied
argument was simple: even if he has done nothing to uplift the living standard of Nigerians, we can at least be consoled by the realization that he means well.
But like anything sinister and insincere, it soon outlived its usefulness and seeming efficacy. But before it came to that stage, Mr. Obi Nwakanma, a Nigerian
poet and journalist residing in the United States had screamed out in a piece in USAfricaonline that Obasanjo was not elected to remain idle and just "mean
well.', And that was indeed true.
But even at that, Nwakanma's protestations were predicated on the acceptance as truth the allegation that Obasanjo actually "means well". My view has been that
those who are peddling that libelous rumour must have invented another meaning for "meaning well". I am yet to see anything to convince me that Obasanjo has the
slightest feeling for the terrible plight of Nigerians, that he has ever meant well. Indeed, I do not think that presently Nigeria requires a super brain to
turn her around for the good of her citizens. That Obasanjo has left Nigeria unattended to today cannot by any stretch of the imagination mean that he has the
intention to do anything but has been hampered by poverty of ideas. The truth is that the man just wanted power for the sake of it. Whatever does not fall in
place in the process should better be left unattended to.
His major problem came from the kind of mind those who crowned him king sold to him. They just told him: all that Nigeria needs to survive is just for you to
merely occupy that position as president. In other words, he was not expected to do any thing. And he bought that idea wholesale! Mr. Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, one of
Obasanjo's spin-doctors, told us recently in a newspaper article that Obasanjo is a mere dancer of fortune who has never paid any dues to attain any height. He
only profits from the fruits of other people's labours; that for him, to attain any height or juicy position, all that was needed each time was for him to
merely make his presence available and some unseen hands will use other people to arrange the rest. No wonder Tony Anenih and Arthur Nzeribe zealously and
joyfully take care of Obasanjo's dirty jobs. What unseen hands are propelling them? Definitely, not the unseen hands of the angels of light.
Now, on a more serious note, how can I believe that Obasanjo means well? Today, late General Sani Abacha is regarded as the worst demon that ever passed through
Aso Rock. But Abacha supported education more than Obasanjo. While Abacha allocated about 26% to education, Obasanjo, on coming into office in 1999 reduced it
to 9%. He has since continued to reduce the allocation to education yearly until he has brought it to 6% now. Indeed, that is the man that they say means well.
Isn't it?
Immediately Obasanjo became president, he told himself that this was his only chance of touching every space on earth and getting several photo opportunities
with world leaders at world capitals. So he pursued this ambition with a most singular zeal and fearsome dedication, closing his ears to all entreaties and
calls from neglected Nigerians on him to come home and attend to the mounting problems of Nigeria. Reuben Abati, his close Egba kinsman and fanatical supporter,
had once, in a rare case of Freudian slip, confided to his readers in an essay that Obasanjo is not interested in Nigeria. For him Nigeria might as well sink
into the nearest lagoon. All he was doing was to merely use Nigeria as a stepping stone to position himself to be accepted outside our shores as a "world
statesman"; so even if Nigeria sinks, all he needed was just for a little space to remain for his jet to take off in pursuit of his ambition of being a "world
statesman"! So while Obasanjo pursued his elusive infantile world dream, gallivanting about the world, Nigeria, already prostrate with hunger and neglect, died
gradually because of absence of leadership and rescue.
Indeed, before our very eyes, the president of Nigeria became a total exile. Even if Nigerians were dying because of epidemic or communal clashes, so long as
the trouble is kept far from his runway, Obasanjo would surely take off to one world capital or the other, grinning from ear to ear, and embracing warm and cold
bodies. His visits became so frequent in some places that the equivalent of councilors and council chairmen then begun to come out to receive him, a whole
president of the most populous black country. Senior government officials had become so weary of his frequent visits. Yet none of these could deter him. World
statesman he must be. Nigeria suffered untold embarrassment and humiliations from this. Indeed, it was after one of those noisy visits to Washington that the
United States described Nigeria as an unsafe country to her nationals. A worthy fruit of the several visits indeed!
The very moment Obasanjo was not air-borne or abroad, and then decides to spend a few days in Nigeria, all his energy, intellect and Nigeria's resources will be
deployed into deciding who will head the upper and lower Houses of the Assembly or who should be dethroned as party chairman, or which political party is to be
destabilized. The money that could have been invested into bettering the lot of Nigerians was wantonly wasted in the large-scale bribery that always accompanied
the gratuitous battles to conquer and subjugate all the governmental and political units in Nigeria just to satisfy the power-lust and bloated ego of a local
Emperor. And when eventually he would deign to cast a glance at impoverished Nigerians, Obasanjo would wonder who made it possible for life to be a bit less
hellish for some of them at all. So in order to put them back in their rightful place, he would start clamping indiscriminate bans on slightly affordable items
like secondhand cars, fridges, air-conditioners, etc. He really could not understand why there could be so many cars at Abuja struggling with him on the roads.
Who is the poor Nigerian that he should dare to seek to enjoy an air-conditioner or a fridge? Certainly, Obasanjo means well! He needed to ban the fairly used
fridges and air-conditioners to protect the ozone layer for the good of all of us! Hail, our good emperor who "means well"! Please, let's face it: this man just
wants power for the sake of it. For him, once he conquers and pockets all the arms of government and all political units, and liquidates all his real and
imagined enemies, then all the things that could demand his leadership will just fall in place by themselves.
April 2003