What do Nigerians expect of President Olusegun Obasanjo

By

Sonala Olumhense

A patriotic achiever, is what I think was the hope at the beginning. Five years later, it is clear he is not one. Nigerians would now simply like to be treated with respect, and left alone quietly to mourn the loss of their post-Abacha hopes and dreams.

It would be nice, as a Nigerian, not to be embarrassed by awful and daily quotes from a leader with a severely limited vocabulary.

"Shut up!"

"You are a bloody fool."

"You're an idiot! A total idiot!!"

Some of the man's apologists say that this kind of behaviour is just his "style." This is no style, it is nonsense. It is the unveiling of a man who is simply uncouth and unrefined; he has no subtlety, no tact, and no sensitivity. In one word, he is uncultured. It is this nation's shame and misfortune that time and happenstance have given him charge over her not once, but twice. His arrogance, on the foundation of this absence of real education, makes him the laughing stock of the international community. He wants to be a statesman, but is grossly ill-equipped.

His record, in or out of uniform confirms that this man lacks managerial skills, cannot mix with people, cannot negotiate nor persuade, and cannot control himself.

Credit must go to his speechwriters. He does not often give the best speeches, but when the man sticks to a script, he gives the impression of a man of some reflection, indeed of a man who has used a dictionary at some point in the past. It is when - and whenever - he strays from the words of others, or is compelled to deploy his own words, that he is exposed as shallow, pompous, coarse, and a menace to the concept of civility.

It is clear now, sadly, that despite his posturing, this man is not going to lead Nigeria out of poverty, or unite its citizens, or empower its children, or build a true road into tomorrow. Given the hopes of 1998 and 1998, Nigeria will be lucky, after Obasanjo, to be one nation, any piece of it worth claiming.

A key path of this problem is simply because what he seeks to cover with his bullying and brutish manner is his lack of capacity for high office. In the late 1970s, these deficiencies were kept under the tight wrap of his military uniform. Hiding in it, he could issue commands and edicts that appeared to be informed and respectable, and he was never seriously found out. The copy of the Nigerian constitution that is on his office desk permits him to wear any truckloads of billowing baban riga. An agbada can hide a lot of things, but not incompetence, which is often emerges as inconsistency, inability to manage programmes and policies, and double-talk. Obasanjo's protection of special interests and of his party-men contradicts the national interest, but who is going to tell him that

An idiot

A total idiot

Thus the man looks at Nigeria, as it hurtles into the past and into irrelevance, and proclaims that it is prospering.

It may be that Obasanjo did try to end the ethno-religious feuds in parts of the country, but his bullying and arrogant approach and double-standards can only guarantee failure. His imposition of Emergency Rule on Plateau State, giving control over to a former military colleague, is a coup, and an insult to the Nigerian voter and the constitution. It is the final confirmation, as though one were required, that the man is no democrat. He thinks like a military dictator, speaks like a dictator and blunders like a dictator.

It may be too much to expect of President Obasanjo, who was about 20 when Nigeria first experienced emergency rule in his own Western Region, to be concerned with the lessons from that experience. After all, as we all know by now, he is superior to History, ancient and modern. His own blunders, sadly, are the standard by which all 20 year olds who cannot obtain an education, or find a job, or negotiate a way out of his political smoke and brimstone, must measure History.