Without the faintest shadows of a doubt, matters regarding the life and exploits of this democratic administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo are moving so inexorably toward an unpleasant denouement or final outcome that they scream for men and women of genuine good faith and compassion to help both the nation and the president to return to earth in a soft landing, at the very least.

But to make this national rescue effort easier for all of us, we have to face certain basic truths in a clinical and dispassionate manner, since rescue efforts cannot be effective in an atmosphere filled with thoughtless passion and partisan bias. For the question now is not whether our president’s metaphorical airplane (in which the pilot is revving up for a highspeed takeoff while the co-pilot is stamping hard on the brakes and the flight engineer is reaching for the ‘off’ switch) is heading for a disastrous crash or not.

All sane and adult Nigerians can clearly see that this aircraft is already sky-borne, and has indeed been so, for well over three years now. All of us can also see, with the exception of President Obasanjo and his large train of advisers perhaps, that the plane is being unprofessionally and dangerously flown or handled by its crew, and that it must inevitably now come down to earth, most preferably in one piece.

However, most of us do not see this precious airplane as that which sym-bolises the Nigerian nation, regardless of the hysterical cries of disaster and national tragedy which would ensue if it crashes. Rather, we see it calmly as an aeroplane which symbolises and has always symbolised the rise and fall of a presidential tenure, plain and simple.

To most of us, the jokers who are carrying their act too far are not in the National Assembly which is for once standing firm to rescue our Fourth Republic from unconstitutionality and dictatorship but in the presidency itself, which has now suddenly woken up to the realisation of the fact that its aeroplane is no longer flying well, and is in fact heading for a very messy crash.

Anyhow, now that Pilot Obasanjo has finally confessed to the nation that he no longer "dey kampe", and that he has lost control of his plane and crew to a mid-air mutiny, it is our compassionate duty as true patriots (not ethnic jingoists or self-seeking ministers and other forms of hustlers and rent-a-crowd demon-strators of support for any government in power), it is our compassionate duty to help bring Obasanjo’s presidential plane back to the ground with minimum damage.

But we must make it clear again, even at the risk of over-emphasis, that this impending crash concerns a presidential plane (or tenure) alone; it is by no means a matter of life and death to the nation which produced it only three years ago, and in whose limitless womb of human and material resources countless other presidential tenures still reside, some far better and some possibly far worse, than this present bumbling, reckless and endangered one which is foolishly equating its own existence with that of the maker which fashioned it into power in 1999; that is, the Nigerian people.

We who built the Obasanjo airplane and successfully kept it in the air for over three years now have thousands of other airplanes ready on the tarmac, with willing and ready crews to fly them. And just as the United States does not and cannot feel that its own national existence is threatened whenever a Boeing 747 come to grief, so can the Nigerian nation not accept the silly and pedestrian argument that the crash of Obasanjo’s presidency is anything to threaten us as an entire nation. After all, we can always pick up the pieces of the wreckage if it does crash, shed a few precious crocodile tears, and put a newer and probably better presidential craft in the air to continue our collective national journey.

What then can be the justification for our anxiety to launch a rescue mission for this rickety and badly piloted presidential plane? Our justification is to be found in the nation’s desire to be compassionate even to such an unqualified pilot and his mutinous crew; in the sweat and hopes which we invested in both plane and crew, that they not come to a disastrous end; and in the natural human instinct to still love and protect even the most wayward and undeserving of its offspring.

But even as we roll out the fire engines and clear the runways for the coming emergency landing, we must not forget that this impending accident, like all others before it, is not just happening. It was caused by the inefficiency and culpable negligence of the pilot to whom we entrusted our precious presidential plane and who repaid our trust with arrogant megalomania and misplaced messianism. And as soon as we succeed in bringing the craft back to earth in one piece, we must be ready to deliver some well-placed kicks to the exalted behinds of the crew, especially that of the pilot whose domineering leadership led to the mid-air mutiny. This is our first bottom line.

The second bottom line is that we must investigate the causes of this presidential plane crash thoroughly, not because it poses any mortal danger to corporate Nigeria but because we wish to avoid future crashes and the cost of clearing the debris and making replacements of men and machines (or machinery).

We already know that making Obasanjo our president in 1999 was a monumental national error. Our specious and self-serving rationalisations of putting a retired general and former military dictator at the helm of the affairs of a nation which was just emerging from prolong military dictatorship was a timid capitulation to continued military hegemony in the affair of our nation-state. It was tantamount to Nigerians of 1960 "electing" the son of the king of England as the prime minister of the newly independent nation on the idiotic excuse that the best way to abolish colonialism was to install one of the colonialists as our leader, as an insurance against re-colonisation.

Now, we can see clearly the futility of such a cowardly decision in the number of retired army generals (IBB, Buhari, Ike Nwachukwu, et al) who are waiting impatiently like vultures in the wings, to take over from their comrade-in-arms as soon as we democratically finish this one’s goose. It now begins to become apparent, does it not, that we can never build genuine democracy in Nigeria until we finally and completely exorcise the demon of military dictators, past and present, from our political life?

In the first place, they are not trained to govern by discussion or consensus or any manner of civil means but by commands, threats and the use of raw force. In the second place, they are neither trained nor inclined to obey constitutions (why, the very first thing they do when they seize power is to murder constitutions!). In the third place, they cannot, for the life of them, submit themselves to accountability to the public. In the fourth place, they have never succeeded in managing a national economy to success. Instead, their paths and tracks are littered with stolen oil wealth and foreign secret accounts filled with mega-billions of hard currency; and the nation is filled with impoverishment and hollow cries of dividends of democracy and threats to national piece and stability. (Now, dear reader, if you were God, would you listen to the prayers of people like Nigerians who importune you ceaselessly for good and God-fearing leadership, yet repeatedly go out, of their own free will, to cast their ballots for tyrants? Therefore, the second set of behinds we must kick out of Nigerian political life is that of retired generals, at least for the next 50 years of democratic governance.

And this would appear to be the most enduring and most valuable lesson which the outgoing or lame duck Obasanjo administration has bequeathed to Nigeria. We now know for sure that no amount of goodwill and spin-artistry can transmute a military dictator of yesterday into a knight in the shining armour of democracy overnight.

Next in line for a well-aimed kick in the pants are our legislators, complete with their newfound patriotic zeal and strict adherence to constitutionalism. More than anyone else in Nigeria, they should know first and know best how far and how rapidly our country was being led down the path of autocracy and dictatorship while pretending to be a democracy. But so long as they were getting their multi-million naira furniture allowances, converting the salaries and allowances of their legislative aides into personal property and receiving regular Ghana-Must-Go bags of presidential inducement in cash, they went along most infamously without a twinge of conscience or remorse.

They not only allowed the executive arm to incubate and hatch into full-blown "democratic" dictatorship, they courted enslavement by the presidency by allowing it to manipulate them in the most shameful manner conceivable. They allowed Obasanjo not only to dictate to them who their leaders would be; to invade the house of the Senate President (Okadigbo 2000) with impunity; and to institute targeted audits of their accounts, but also to destroy the very party which all of them rode to power.

I should know, because I was there. Especially between 1999 and 2000, I wrote until my pen ran dry and spoke on television (AIT) until I became hoarse, warning them about the growing danger of this very same democratic dictatorship of Obasanjo. Why, they even invited me and begged me to help them fight the Baba Iyabo dictatorship as controller of media and information matters for our National Assembly. Our contract lasted for just four months during which they caged me in Nicon Hilton and left me to run crazy with stress and frustration, while they continued to lie back and enjoy it as Obasanjo raped both the National Assembly and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party.

But hideous and unpardonable as all these acts of commission and omission of the past three and a half years have been, we must still draw the last bottom line of the discussion at a point short of outright impeachment of our president. If for no other reason than that we as a people have the permanent moral high ground over the petty selfishness and base motives of our elected and appointed public office holders, we must not allow this bunch of opportunistic and power-drunk "second-term" desperadoes to destroy the hallowed institutions of our admittedly imperfect constitution.

We should kick very many exalted and stinking behinds in the process of reorganising our development of democracy, but we must stop short of an unnecessary and superfluous impeachment process.

We must let OBJ go peacefully into retirement next year, and we should make up our minds that next time around we would "kick arse" (pardon my French) much earlier than we are now trying to do, when all the damage of the past three years has already been irretrievably done. All elections must hold between now and next year, and we must choose our new leaders in peace and freedom. That is the people’s irreducible bottom line.

Oct 2002