Obasanjo, Jonathan and the Story of Nigeria
By
Ibraheem A. Waziri
iawaziri@yahoo.com
LEADERSHIP Newspaper, PAGE 37
As expected the leaked letter of OBJ to GEJ generated a rainbow like responses. The debate pitched proponents and opponents against one other on the question of whether OBJ has the moral right or not to chastise GEJ on the things he highlighted in the letter; whether his insinuations and conclusions are borne of real altruism and genuine patriotism. Keenly, GEJ’s yesterday’s response also expressed similar reservations.
But for some of us who are interested in understanding Nigeria as a system with strengths and weaknesses, the issues are different. We see in all of these a storyline that should help future sincere public actors with a set of comprehensive instructions in nation building, power politics and effective self-preservation. In this, there is the question of who are OBJ and GEJ past and present. What do they stand for? How Nigeria is seen in the community of nations? How have people interested in power politics fared in it?
The conclusion as it is now is OBJ by whatever standard you may wish to measure him, is the perfect reflection of the most successful Nigerian statesman. He was there during the civil war; he put his life on the line. He’s been active in the Nigerian public space as a policy formulator, policy executor or policy critic. He is what Nigeria can make of its child; and everything you believe Nigeria is, because of him, reflects what a child can make of Nigeria. When your child says he wants to be a successful Nigerian President, OBJ provides the first specimen of who your child aspires to become. In short OBJ represents the entire story of Nigeria past and present!
If this needs a justification then it is in the popular assumption that says good system logic presents four options or scenarios that guarantee self-preservation and benefit; continual survival of the system; satisfaction on the parts of the other system elements; or the eventual crash of the system due to the failure of any of the three above. So far Nigeria as a system has not crashed. In its array of statesmen and operators OBJ achieved more than any other in self-preservation, esteem and benefit. The judgment of how he did that; his rights or wrongs both personal and official that exerted enough negative and positive influence on the whole system is left out for another day. But surely in them is the secret of his survival and his towering stance as the most successful Nigerian statesman. We must understand though that success is not an ideal space in our imagination. Thus OBJ as a success must not be seen in the light of what he has done only. It is also about what Nigeria has done to him in the process of his growth that molded and completed his intellectual and emotional statue.
In this it is very wrong to assume that he has had no principles that informed his actions or bench marked his propositions. He believed in Nigeria as a united indivisible entity. His third term quest, though seen as an over ambition, was actually pursued within the laid down principled structure of the Nigerian nation. He wanted it within the constitution as the quest carried along different stakeholders from all religious, regional and ethnic divides. He forsook the ambition when it became apparent Nigerians, not Northerners, Southerners, Muslims or Christians would not agree with him on it.
Obasanjo wanted to exploit the division in the North along religious line in order to firmly hold and manipulate the political fortune of the region. But there were benchmarks and extents. When the then Plateau state governor, Joshua Dariye, extended that will and practice to supporting carnages he stamped his feet against him to the point where some in his interest grouping assumed he turned off against them and in favor of the other.
As those seeing with the third eye say, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s administration was corrupt but was very Nigerian in outlook and philosophy as it carried all along regardless of religious, ethnic and zonal or regional affiliations in its corruption. So they say also Obasanjo’s second coming was equally nationalistic in outlook, philosophy and corruption but a little bit tilted against the north and its political players at the center. Even then it can easily be seen that he actually maintained a principled benchmark in his quest to weaken the North. He kept it reasonably satisfied within Nigeria.
Unfortunately for GEJ his Nigerian story did not so far contain enough activities that put him at the center of fair and perfect analysis to enable the flow of a robust conclusion. No matter how much we want to do justice to him, even the recent letter written by OBJ will not serve us with enough initial tender of every kind. On one part we see in the letter the quest of OBJ to keep surviving the political space. On the other we see the tendency for Jonathan to allow the writing of his own story as a statesman in the wider frame of Nigerian story, using a very poor residue, maybe a charcoal. Perhaps our future leaders should be in the public space for some time enough for their direction to be clearly seen, known and neatly mapped before we completely trust them with captain-ship.
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