As it was ... Eight years ago

By Tunde Fagbenle

Obasanjo

As we prepare to bid President Obasanjo final goodbye from the seat of power, I’ve gone digging into my past columns, what was written then – 8 years ago – to see how far our thoughts, predictions, and fears were right or wrong.
Today is my first recall:

OBASANJO’S SECOND CHANCE
What Olusegun Obasanjo is getting is a rarity: a second chance. And I am beginning to think, God (with partiality?) singles out some people in order to prove to the rest of us regular folks that nothing is impossible.

And Nigeria is one helluva country where the impossible, the unthinkable, have been happening.

Back in August (during that Uncle Sege’s “I’ll slap you” saga in London, remember?), I’d have wagered my last kobo against an Obasanjo presidency. I would have wagered that even his wife, Stella, would have voted against him in his household, not to talk of millions (actual or rigged) of Nigerians, particularly the politicians who would have changed their citizenship at such prospect.

But here we are today. Even if he dies now, God forbid, Obasanjo would go down on record as Nigeria’s ‘elected’ president for the fourth republic, and presumably Atiku would succeed him. Oops, I’m prejudging the Constitution again!

There’s something peculiar about General Obasanjo and the law of karma. His own karma isn’t about some past life, it’s all in one lifetime.

An angered Obasanjo it was, as military head of state in the 70’s, who contrived the terrible decree to deal with those he perceived as ‘traitors’ with a hand in the killing of his predecessor and buddy, General Murtala Mohammed. Come the 90s, the same decree was brought down, from the ceiling where it was hung after its last use, upon its original creator, Obasanjo. But because God, (or karma?) wasn’t done with him yet, he survived three years of harsh jail.

Obasanjo it was, again in 1979, who as military ruler, voluntarily and singularly handed over to a democratic government after very controversial elections. Come 1999, the same Obasanjo has become a beneficiary of similar gesture – another military ruler voluntarily handing over to him after no less controversial elections.

There may yet be more deeds, good or bad, Obasanjo did in this lifetime that may yet be visited upon him. That is left to him and his karma.

When Obasanjo was military head of state, his Yoruba people remember with shame, if not anger, his reported vindictiveness, ungraciousness and non-support of his people and his denial of any goodness to them. In a rare favour of the gods, he now has the opportunity of a second chance at redressing the ills of his people, and of all other aggrieved peoples of Nigeria.

But in the manner he chose to honour his words, as an officer and a gentleman, handling over power to an elected government, and in the manner he threw himself at the world as an international statesman, Obasanjo had left an indelible mark on the pages of history.

He is now faced with a rare second chance. He would either rise to etch his name in gold for all time, or sink to smear and mar even that which he achieved erstwhile.

What would determine this would be as much in how he takes on the challenge of restoring Nigeria’s political and economic glory, as in how he takes his second bow.

The circumstance must neither emulate how his previous successor emerged, nor how he himself has emerged this second time.

The transition to REAL democracy after this round must be truly FREE and FAIR. (Published March 7, 1999)

Chris Madu Okolie, Adieu

The history of newsmagazine journalism in Nigeria would not be complete, nay, would not even start, without the mention of the heroic exploits of one young man named Chris Madubrochukwu Okolie.

Chris was the man who started it all, way back in the early 70s. And what made Chris’ novel effort more brazen in its audacity was his background. Before then all that was known of Chris was as a this’n’that self-promoting show-promoter. There wasn’t much else about him, and in a country in which paper-qualification is worshipped Chris hadn’t much of it to show for respect; after all, he wasn’t a university graduate!

But Chris was bigger than his detractors. He plodded on with extraordinary zeal and messianic focus as he charted a course hitherto un-trodden.

Before long, not only was his bi-monthly newsmagazine – Newbreed – a huge commercial success, Chris, the non-graduate, began to employ graduates into his Newbreed Organisation.

The Newbreed magazine was bold, beautiful and glossy. Decision makers were reading it, and as it made more incursions into investigative journalism, exposing issues that the powers that be would rather want swept under the carpet, it became a thorn in the flesh of the military government of the day, and it was only a matter of time before its ban came.

The ‘honours’ was done by, who else but a General Obasanjo, when he was the military head of state. That was in 1977.

Chris did not die with the Newbreed magazine. A man of unbridled energy, he continued in another name, The President magazine, with a slightly more business focus than political but still under the Newbreed Organisation banner, and it published well into the early eighties when it ran out of steam and other publishers had been encouraged to come on stream.

But what is more astounding about Chris is the manner in which he reinvented himself. Even while battling with the enormous task of running the vast Newbreed Organisation, Chris quietly went back to the classroom to gain and pocket what the lack of had caused him not a few slight and spite – a university degree! And he did it in style, shuttling between Nigeria and his university in the UK (Birmingham or Buckingham, can’t remember) until he earned a law degree. He followed that up with the Nigerian Law School, and thereafter the new, improved, (Blue Omo!) Chris (who was married into the wealthy and popular Ibru family) launched himself upon the Nigerian socio-political scene as a personality to reckon with, attending the NIPSS in Kuru and running for the senate at a time.

But the memory of Chris that tickles is that of a man who, at the height of his success and fame as magazine publisher, would do the most unimaginable things to get going. Chris, it was, who sort of unwittingly introduced the motorcycle ride as a solution to beat the impossible Lagos traffic. That was in those days when there were no okadas, except mail-runners. It was not unusual of Publisher/Chief Executive Chris to abandon his car in the midst of Lagos traffic and, suit, briefcase and all, hike a ride on a passing motorbike in desperate bid to catch a business appointment, and thereafter, success achieved, return to his limo!

And there was no crazier, harder, bargainer than Chris in this world. I recall an occasion in the late 70s when I bargained with Chris to help him carry out an editorial supplement on Kano State for his magazine in return for merely some batter-air-tickets to enable me move to England with my two little kids after I quit the Travels magazine I was the managing editor of.

The assignment all done and delivered, Chris began to baulk over supplying the tickets even when he wasn’t going to part with any cash – the few airlines then were freer in giving tickets in (batter) exchange for publishing their adverts. Weeks of face-off ended with a nasty brawl in his office (and I learnt that was what to do!) whereupon the tickets were promptly issued. Chris then gave me a big mutual-respect hug and we went for a meal and drink. Our friendship was bonded! Weird!!

News of Chris’ death early this month hit me like a bolt from the blue for I did not know of his accident or hospitalisation. What a pity.

In this age of fast bucks and little sweat, the likes of Chris are rare to find. Chris was a pioneer of uncommon guts, a colossus whose footprints are firmly etched in the sands of time.

Goodbye my colleague and friend.