The second problem which also relates to the president's personality is lack of good judgment. At least three times in recent times, Obasanjo has shown exceptional lack of good judgment. In 1995, when he was accused of being part of the coup, he was out of the country. As I have said in previous issues of this Newsletter, Walter Carrington, the then US Ambassador to Nigeria contacted him overseas and informed him of the possibility of his arrest if he (Obasanjo) returned to Nigeria. That not withstanding, he returned to Nigeria and had to spend three horrible years in jail. Did he expect that he would be jailed by Abacha? No. He thought that because he was a former head of state, a member of the eminent persons group and a local celebrity, Abacha could not dare it. He was wrong. Bad judgment number one. More recently his decision to pardon Salisu Buhari and the sudden 50% fuel hike show a president that has no clue on cause-effect relationship.

Reason Number Three:

Imagine you are a dancer and there are fifty drummers, none of whom had rehearsed with the other. The result is that as you are about to tune to the beating of one drum, another breaks the rhythm. Obviously, you will be acting incoherent to the audience. This is what allegiance to too many stakeholders does. Politics is about interest groups but a president who is mortgaged to too many stakeholders will be very ineffective.

When he came out of prison, Mr. Obasanjo had no money. I have already mentioned the financial stress the family was under while he was in prison in a previous essay in this newsletter. The incumbent in Senegal recently recounted his personal effort in this direction. A group paid for Obasanjo's campaign, so he is committed to this group. He is also committed to an irresponsible quota system in his party. His ministers are not actually appointed by him. They are rather elected in very small caucuses and then sent to him. Each part of the country has a ministerial portfolio allocated to it. The political big wigs in that part of the country come together and select amongst themselves based on criteria that have nothing to do with national needs. This explains why his cabinet and the national assembly are a garbage can of past politicians recycled without first  disinfecting them. There are at least twenty-seven other interest groups with whom the president juggles all the time.

Incompetence. Obasanjo personally has no competence in many areas of modern leadership. But he doesn't have to if he is assisted by good and responsible subordinates. This obviously is not the case. With a president who doesn't seem to have a minimum moral denominator and a collage of assistants who are incompetent and therefore self-serving, it is not hard to see why the regime is in a moral and economic mess.

Wherever you look, you will see clear examples of recklessness bordering on misanthropy by Obasanjo's clique. It took active campaign by some of us to awaken the country to the present dangers in telecommunication and the digital colonization of Nigeria. Reluctantly the president appointed a special adviser on space science and technology. It is taking all the effort to convince a regime that has already mortgaged the future of 120 million Nigerians to the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank that such conditions are unacceptable. When one makes one argument for debt cancellation, the regime simply acts like a lame duck, eternally pleading with an International community we owe nothing to start with.

The secrecy and urgency with which this regime makes its blunders is frightening. A dialogue with its principal officers is like a dialogue with the hard of hearing where one has to shout and repeat oneself many times. Even then they still fail to understand because they lack the basic mental acuity to apprehend what one is saying. The effect is that in the bid to educate them on what ought to be done, one runs the risk of advising the other party at the same time, one alerts others of impending strategies, simply because those Obasanjo hired neither think nor listen.

Reason Number Five:

When Mafia zoning meets incompetence, the result is predictably corruption. Obasanjo's regime, no matter how it attempts to be seen as anti-corrupt, is corruption ridden. Here a distinction has to be made between the president as a person and his presidency. I have no doubt that Obasanjo wants to run a corruption-free administration but he is incompetent in effectively supervising his assistants and so most of them are terribly corrupt. Don't go to the well-known fact that recovered loot is spent with abandon. Obasanjo has personally discovered that his foreign trips became a gold-mine for his corrupt officials.

The national assembly is ridden with scavengers and mercenaries as it is now a racketeering market where semi nude women and active criminals vie for front slots. The ministries are no different. LPOs (Local Purchase Orders) are still racketeered. Contract padding is still going on with demonic efficiency. The customs, immigrations, police, NEPA, etc are still cesspools of fraud and corruption. The post office is still a stranger to decency and NITEL is almost completely run by a Mafia group.

The amount spent in Aso Rock each day on entertainment will be enough to equip a modest university library in the country.

Sycophancy and bootlicking are at all-time high. How was Mrs. Obasanjo able to raise 240 million naira during her recent launch of a petty project? This is a woman, who less than eighteen months ago, could barely feed her family. Now if this derives from goodwill alone, why did these contributors not assist her when her husband was unjustly incarcerated? Why have the Obasanjos suddenly acquired so many rich friends? Where were they when the going was tough?

About three months ago, Obasanjo ordered the immediate payment of all arrears owed Julius Berger. Last month, Julius Berger responded in kind by contributing almost seven million naira to a PDP luncheon. Recall that the president of the republic was present when a foreign company contributed to a local political party, an effrontery that is unparalleled in the history of developed politics. You will recall that more than 700 million naira was raised in this ignominious event. From where does the money come? How much did the new contributors  contribute when the party was formed? What else is corruption? How does one define graft? Is Obasanjo unaware of the moral implications of this type of double standard?

Reason Number Seven

This leads to the next problem. Why does the regime think that what Nigerians feel does not actually matter? Because there is this erroneous impression that the credibility and endurance of this regime do not depend on Nigerians but on external agents. We need not reiterate how wrong this belief is, however, for the sake of clarity, let us give some examples to buttress this point.

There is this euphoric, almost hallucinatory feeling that Nigeria is being held afloat by the combined moral and material strength of a democratic world. Nonsense!

A little digression may help here. Recently there was an article by Professor Omo Omuruyi (he was the director of the Institute for Democracy during Babangida's regime) in Africans Abroad where he narrated the pathetic belief of late chief MKO Abiola that if he was arrested, the West led by the United States would not allow him to be imprisoned. Well he was wrong. He was arrested, imprisoned and had 'heart attack' in prison. Nothing happened. Anyone who wants to know the details of why Abiola was abandoned by the West should read an article I wrote about this in "Sustainable Development forum" of March/April 1994)

Professor Omoruyi was re-stating what many of us have known all the time, namely: that like the Orwellian 'boxer' an African leader is useful as long as he is in control, once he is out, the expediency of international relations requires that foreign governments react with measured tact. To re-state the obvious, if Obasanjo is overthrown today, nothing will happen. If he is killed today, nothing will happen. If he is imprisoned today, nothing will happen. The international community lacks the tactical and logistical capacity to sustain democracy anywhere. Moral suasion is important but the practical demands of sustaining democracy require life and blood which only the citizens can provide. The only safeguard for democracy and peace in Nigeria are Nigerians themselves, the greatest investment Obasanjo's regime can make is in the support and goodwill of Nigerians themselves. Anyone who advises him to the contrary is simply fooling him.

There are contexts within which further examples are possible but I will defer this to another time. At least he learnt something from the recent fuel crisis. This is the same type of lesson Egypt learnt in the 70's during the bread riot. To date Egyptian government has never repeated Sadat's mistake. Remember Sadat thought the Open door policy leading up to Camp David made the people's resolve subordinate to the whims of external agents. He was wrong. the same  When discontent boils over, Obasanjo will have himself to blame!

Reason Number Eight

There is another problem here which people tend to emphasize more and more. This is the problem of inexperience. There is a world of a difference between inexperience and incompetence. One is not the cause of the other. Inexperience is the lack of adequate exposure to the practical aspects of a problem. Incompetence on the other hand, is failure to master these practical demands even after repeated exposures. When we send our young medical doctors for housemanship, or designate our new graduate engineers as pupil engineers, we know that they need guidance under more experienced practitioners. In fact, it is during this period that the perceptive mentor discovers the talents, those with immense promise.

This is not the case with our politicians. They have been in this business time and again, and they have failed time and again. So for those of you who support the theory of inexperience, think again. They are simply incompetent, they have learnt nothing from the past, they have mastered no rules of decency, they have habituated no skill at personal integrity, they have failed in the past and now they are failing again. Their case is  one incompetence, not a case of inexperience.

The rules of democracy operate within the general rules of social conduct, they operate within the milieu of social responsibility. There are no set of rules out there called democratic rules that cannot be found in the rules of personal integrity, honesty, dedication, justice and fairness. Anyone who exhibits these traits, no matter how, will be a good public servant. Irresponsibility is not the act of dictatorship alone, it is rather a mindset which refuses to account for its actions, for what one does. Whether this is at home to a spouse, or children, in business to partners or in politics is immaterial. The result is the same.