The year is 2100, and Form 5 students of the Imade College, Owo, are sitting for their mock history WASC examinations. In the objective or multiple answer section, they come across:-

Out of the following army officers that ruled Nigeria, how many fought to keep Nigeria one and handed over to a democratically elected government? Circle only one correct answer.

[a] President Ibraheem Babangida

[b] General Aguiyi Ironsi

[c] President Olusegun Obasanjo

[d] General Sani Abacha

[e] General Olusegun Obasanjo

Too easy? Any student that picks [c] and [e] will be right but the computer has been programmed to accept only [e]. This things happen, that is the difference between 49% and 50%. As published recently in a Nigerian daily, General Babangida has assured Nigerians that the same attributes that made General Obasanjo succeed before will enable him do same again. These attributes are, acceptability and the believe in the unity of Nigeria. History, unfortunately would not be impressed by a person who attains the same feat twice. It is assumed that once you can jump 5 feet high you should be able to do same again. I00 years from now, none of those kids, taking the mock examination above would appreciate the tensions generated by Shari’ah, OPC and MASSOB.

The man

Of all the 4 generals mentioned above, if you are being hunted down by any of them, Obasanjo stands the greatest chance of success within a stated time frame.[ Bear with me, he is not going to appoint me a minister.] Obasanjo will send out the message or the appearance that he is not actually looking for you and as soon as you relax your guard, gotcha. You will also stand the greatest chance of being released alive after capture by him, but you will have to ‘do bale’. Ironsi will match down to your perceived hiding place and bellow at the top of his voice for you to come out and then ask for your name and rank before putting you up for a court martial and later execution. Babangida will promise you everything you want, smile, whistle, take a dance step and soon as you step out., bam, you are dead, one bullet. Abacha, will found out who your parents are, pick them up. If you don’t show up, he will extend the net. He will even go as far as picking up your mother in law which you wouldn’t really mind but sooner or later he will start on your children, when you would then foolishly give up, and he will use you for target practice, slow death. These four gentlemen have something in common they have been in the most demanding profession of all, trained to hunt down men and kill. Unfortunately for Obasanjo he alone has had the double misfortune of running a disparate state called Nigeria twice. Like the high jumper earlier mentioned, Obasanjo has to do more than sit on the throne and arranged a handover at the appointed time. His greatest achievement has been the handing over of government. Even if you want to add, to the wrong person, first misfortune, and that is a matter of opinion. The second misfortune is that, in his recent coming, the Nigeria he left behind has changed for the worse.

For Obasanjo to surpass his earlier feat, he has to achieve more than he did before and the only way out, is for him to wrought an economic miracle within the next 3 years or at least lay a solid foundation. His focus right now should be on the short term because ‘on the long term, we would all be dead anywhere’. When you take over a sinking ship, you don’t go round raising flags and painting the bulwarks you shout all hands on deck and start bailing out water.

The economist

I have argued in an earlier article that Obasanjo has never seen a loan he could not take, but I am particularly amused at his tirade against compound interest, his economic adviser must be cringing at home. General, compound interest is the love potion of investments. You cannot attract investments to Nigeria if the investors think you do not worship at the altar of compounding. His words in the Vanguard of 8/15/00 : "All that we had borrowed up to 1985 or 1986 or thereabouts was around $5 billion and we have paid about $16 billion, yet we are still being told that we are owing about $28 billion because of injustices in the foreign creditors interest rates". General could you tell us how much Nigeria has earned from the sale of oil since 1985 till date? Could you imagine how much 10% of that amount if kept in fixed deposit investment, would have earned in 15 years? Please! Have you never heard of the saying "he who goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing". If Nigeria’s economy was finely tuned, such statements would have triggered off a crash of the Nigerian Stock Exchange and create a major disincentive for people to save money which would lead to capital shrinkage. The only good thing to come out of that outburst, if I may say, is that, when Professor Sam Aluko read it, he laughed so hard he started crying!

The caption read: ‘Nigeria’s foreign debt illegal.’ I do not know about you, but I hope the president knows something we ordinary mortals don’t. All I know is that, the Venezuelan president in whose company those statements were uttered had just come off a visit to Saddam Hussein, before touching down in Nigeria and, suddenly, our normally circumspect President is sounding like a young beret wearing graduate of the Cuban School of Economics. In the international political arena which the president knows so well, there is nothing like coincidence and next week the Yankees are coming.

When history also looks at his first outing, the one action that would stick out like a sore thumb is, the decree against private practice. General, help yourself, dust up the old files and bring out that one you enacted, forcing citizens who have just graduated to compulsorily serve in the government for six years before going into private practice. That single decree is the bane of entrepreneurial spirit in Nigeria today. An economist our president is definitely not.

The politician

On August 11, 2000, the headlines screamed ‘MASSOB leader is a Crook’ and Obasanjo was quoted as saying that ‘The leader of MASSOB was engaged in 419 activities……and the government could not give any serious consideration to such ………..people of questionable character’. Hello! If this assertion is true and the President does nothing, then he is aiding and abetting criminal activity., see where we are going? Also, if Obasanjo made that statement, he has committed the first cardinal sin of politics, because by bending low to kick Uwazuruike, he has elevated him above himself. Now we are looking at the President of Nigeria exchanging words with the President of Biafra. When politicians want to nail opponents they use surrogates ala Okadigbo and the ranting ant. The irony is that Obasanjo had the best opportunity to finish off Uwazuruike through the MASSOB leader’s own miscalculation, but he does not possess well honed political instincts. This opportuned moment came when Uwazuruike was arrested at the last OAU conference in Togo. All Obasanjo had to do was insist on a psychological evaluation of Uwazuruike while in detention. There are one or two doctors in Togo which Obasanjo could have leaned on to certify Uwazuruike mentally unbalanced before releasing him to the Nigerian authorities on humane grounds. By now, Uwazuruike would have been going round shouting himself hoarse that he is sane and volunteering for any test anywhere in the world, but that would have been the end of MASSOB.

The timing of this outburst coming on the heels of Okadigbo’s impeachment, is too fortuitous. It was as if it was directed at the Ibo nation, and did you see the reply?, suddenly, we started reading of how their forefathers started and what they predicted, and the number of doctors they had in 1914, 1950 and 1970. All that was needed to crown it, was the image of Ojukwu or Ekwueme appearing on national television with tears in their eyes claiming they were being marginalized because they are Ibos. A system perfected by Zik, which would really have set the president on edge. He has never experienced that level of political and emotional blackmail and for his sake I hope he does not. General, hate them or love them, there is something you will never be able to take away from them and that is their education, organization and discipline. Without the Ibo’s industriousness the journey to the Nigerian eldorado will be long and tortuous. Personally, ‘Biafra of the mind’ is more dangerous than that of Uwazuruike, but I pray history proves me wrong. A politician our president is not.

The soldier

All predictions about the future are unreliable so let me rather ask, what are the causes of war? War occurs when the level of greed amongst the rich is matched by the envy of the poor. This greed leads on to a collision not only with the poor but with other rich people and this is characterized by conflicts, an increasing number of citizens who cannot be reintegrated into mainstream society., who now presently constitute the main bulk of the infantry corps of the Almajiri brigade, OPC commandos, the Bakassi Red Devils and the Egbesu Marines. Nigeria is also characterized by the Structural Adjustment Program induced unemployment, uneven distribution of the population due to migration into urban centers, alienation, general frustration and high crime rates. If you take a count of the total number of Nigerians that have died from sudden and violent death within this year, any right thinking person will come to the conclusion that we are in a state of war. It is an illusion to try and build a solid economic foundation on such a discombobulating polity. Nigeria provides enough for every ones needs but not enough for every ones greed. The Mahatma would have said if he was a Nigerian.

The challenge Obasanjo faces is not if he could remain in power until 2003, he has already been there and done that. His mission the chroniclers of history would posit therefore, is, whether he should have moved Nigeria forward and reduce tensions through sound economic applications or roll out the tanks and physically suppress the tension. The latter has been his first instinct, and Odi would always occupy a page in his life history. The buzzing of Eastern Nigeria with the air force fighter planes during MASSOB’s launching, the purchase of patrol boats from the United States, the signing of a defense pact with Turkey [deployment of Turkish soldiers in shari’ah territories?] and the secret visits to South Korea to arrange for counter insurgency training facilities, all show his reaction and readiness as a soldier. The other option he has, is to approach the situation asking himself the questions he had been taught to ask in war colleges. If the cause of the present war Nigeria is fighting is poverty, then, how do we fight and win this war?. Forget north, south, Shari’ah, OPC, Egbesu etc for one moment, the common enemy is poverty. General, apply your training. If we assume that Nigeria has a population of 100 million, I would not be wrong to say that 99 million are poor. Poverty here is taken as the inability to WORK yourself out of misery. It covers under employment and unemployment and very low productivity. Obasanjo should understand that for these 99 million fellow citizens of his, the chance to work, no matter the level of pay and productivity, is the greatest need. The only way to win this war is through the provision of jobs.

Think back to his Operation Feed the Nation. My opinion is that in terms of tangible results in food production it was a failure. Indigenes of Rivers State leaving Ibadan to report at Port Harcourt were paid ten naira transport fare, where as those traveling to Lagos were paid fifteen naira. Some students even got paid counterfeit money., but in terms of taking care of a very vocal minority in the country, the operation was a success. I believe this is the reasoning behind the current Poverty Alleviation Program. My suggestion is that he should personally take over this department, privatize NEPA and let the private economy take care of its headache. Then concentrate on provision of organizational finance; identification of existing raw materials; stream line marketing facilities because Nigeria has a market of 100 million consumers at any given day, and, encourage entrepreneurial spirit. The greatest need of the poor are building materials, clothing, household goods, agricultural tools, trees [Awka people need machine tools], water, crop storage facilities and at least the first stages of processing these products. 

Epitaph

The reason why [e] is the most correct answer to the question above, and not [c], is that Mathew Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo is a soldier and a general, and not a political economist. One hundred years from now, after all this has passed., if and when Nigeria decides to erect a statue to honor him, I predict it will be one of him in uniform and not agbada. For record purposes, the question I would humbly beg of him to answer is, what he wants inscribed on the granite?

Orok Edem

Calabar Development Association 8/17/00