Why Obasanjo has no true friend

By Adebayo Kareem

I read with interest Mr Abiodun Raufu’s piece about the unfolding demystification of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and the fact that none of his hangers-on has deemed it necessary to come out in his defence. These are not the best of times for Chief Obasanjo. He is being assailed by his known adversaries and past friends. It is of course not unusual for Nigerians to subject their immediate past leaders to sustained attacks after they had left office. We did the same to Gowon, Shagari, Buhari, IBB and Abacha. We tend to vent our collective spleen on our leaders when they are out of power, knowing full well that their ability to inflict further pains on us has receded. What makes Obasanjo’s case extraordinary is the fact that the attacks have been instigated and sustained largely mainly by his own blood; his own ethnic group and his past friends and associates. It is also extraordinary that none of those bootlickers who were urging him to press the self-destruction button of third term has come out in his defence. Suddenly in the twilight of his life, Chief Obasanjo is learning that life in the valley of power is brutish and harsh. This piece is not about the validity or otherwise of the ongoing investigations against Chief Obasanjo, but to try and understand why the chief finds himself in his present predicament.

A good test of a person’s worth is how he is perceived by those who have had dealings with him. For example, Sani Abacha is generally assailed by Nigerians for his brazen kleptomania and brutality. Yet at the peak of the universal opprobrium against him shortly after his death, there were a handful of people who were willing to come out and defend him. Senator Waku falls into this category. Similarly, IBB ‘stepped aside’ from power some 15 years ago, yet he has retained the loyalty of many people who worked with him and who continue to flock to his Hilltop mansion in Minna for political directives. However, barely a year after he left Aso Rock, even President Yar’Adua, who is perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Obasanjo’s political abracadabra, is distancing himself from the man. The reason for this is not far-fetched: Obasanjo lacks the necessary interpersonal skills to sustain good relationships and retain the loyalty of people. From his private dealings to his professional and political relationships, the chief has not been able to retain the loyalty and respect of those who have had dealings with him. This could be inferred from running battles with his ex-wives and lovers and his present travails with Gbenga Obasanjo.

Professionally, the chief tends to fall out with his erstwhile colleagues. Looking through the list of ex-military colleagues of Chief Obasanjo, it is hard to see anyone who has kind words to say of the retired general. Even TY Danjuma who threatened to go to exile if Obasanjo was not elected as the country’s president in 1999 now considers him corrupt, vain and vindictive. The same could be said of his political associates. From Atiku Abubakar, to Tony Anenih, Titi Ajanaku etc, Chief Obasanjo has a reputation as a man who uses and dumps people as soon as it suits him. This, of course, does not engender any sense of loyalty since it is difficult to remain loyal to a man that has no trace of loyalty in him.

Another possible explanation for Obasanjo’s present predicament is that he surrounded himself with people who had no real respect or admiration for him but stayed with him and tolerated his idiosyncrasies solely because of what they stood to gain materially. The general is known to be generally contemptuous of intellectuals and barely tolerated them.

It is little wonder that he ultimately fell out with the few policy-minded individuals in his government. He thrived under the false and fawning accolades of political jobbers and career praise singers who massaged his ego by drumming it into his ears that the sun would not rise and set but for he (Obasanjo’s) grace! Now that he can no longer award juicy contracts, these political fine baras have consigned Obasanjo into irrelevance and are strategising and rehearsing news songs for the current tenant of Aso Rock. They are not obliged to defend him because their relationship with the man was never built on such a mundane concept!

Chief Obasanjo is perhaps the luckiest Nigerian alive. From a humble beginning, providence has thrust him in positions of authority which his ability hardly merited. He has ruled the country for 11 of our 48 years of independence ahead of more deserving and capable compatriots. Fate has elevated him beyond his ability. Not unlike George Bush, he is a man out of his depth, seeing power as an end in itself and not a means to a collective, altruistic end. In his book “Nzeogu”, Obasanjo tells of how he effortlessly achieved the Nigerian presidency which Chief Awolowo, an intellectually and morally more superior Nigerian failed to achieve. He mistakes good fortune for inherent ability and since the gods appeared to have been with him, he began to revel in his own presumed apotheosis.

Finally, a lot of the goodwill previously generated by Chief Obasanjo came from without and not from within. Obasanjo’s immediate constituents, the Yoruba people, never overrated the man and had seen through the Obasanjo façade right from the very beginning. His election into the Nigerian presidency in 1999 came about in spite of the Yorba people ,who resoundingly voted against him. This pattern was generally maintained in 2003 ,although the PDP machinery managed to “take over” the west through illegitimate means. Obasanjo generally returned the favour by his contemptuous dismissal of key Yoruba leaders and actively campaigned against Yoruba interests. Previously, he hadinstantly dismissed Chief MKO Abiola’s electoral victory and covertly worked against the realisation of the June 12 mandate before eventually finding himself in Abacha’s rampaging net. Throughout his eight years in power, he did nothing to immortalise MKO Abiola ,even though his election in 1999 was a direct result of the June 12 imbroglio (I once read somewhere of how throughout his public speeches between 1999-2007, he never mentioned MKO Abiola at all!).

The Yoruba people say if you sold your household cheaply into slavery, you might find that you are not able to repurchase them,even at a premium. A man without a base is like a fish out of water. The unravelling of the Obasanjo legacies is a lesson for all students and players of power politics in Nigeria that, as Zik used to say, “no condition is permanent”.

Kareem, a London-based solocitor wrote via omoalufa@hotmail.co.uk.