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OBASANJO AND NIGERIA ’S TROUBLES

An objective look and reasoning will naturally reveal that the title of this article is apt and unbiased. General Olusegun Obasanjo , Nigeria ’s Head of State from 1976-1979 and Nigeria ’s Executive President from 1999 to 2007 is central to the misfortune the largest black nation in the world is going through. If not for any other factor but for the fact that the man has been lucky or unlucky depending on who is assessing ,to be at the helm of affairs of the country for close to twelve years in all ,without having much to show for it. It is however instructive to know that both periods represented eras of prosperity if the nations earnings from the international oil market are indices of measuring national prosperity. The news however, is a sad one to the extent that the nation and its people have nothing but doom to show for the Obasanjo years of Nigeria ’s oil boom.

We may have forgotten the events of 1970’s because we are a people of poor historical habits but not the events of 1999 to 2007 which are still staring us in the face. They are too recent and painful to be suppressed .Do we talk of third term project of wasted billions and human lives? Is it the criminally rigged elections? The bad luck of air disasters of President Obasanjo’s years? Which one? Obasanjo has been wicked to the Nigerian people. This wickedness has been captured by both his friends and foes as a result of the negative impact they have on the country. Nigeria and her people are groaning on the pains of Obasanjo’s years. It is sad! While on this piece of writing I remembered a brilliant article written by Olusegun Adeniyi, who has recently joined the “club” of political office holders in Abuja as the President’s Spokesman, he may not favour this line of thinking anymore, because like a typical Nigerian he is now on the other side.Adeniyi called Obasanjo in his column in the THISDAY newspaper sometime in year 2000, The vanishing messiah. I agreed with Adeniyi then, because that was at the peak of Obasanjo’s quarrels with the late Chuba Okadigbo who was then the Senate President; and between Obasanjo and the Oyi of Oyi as the late erudite scholar was known, I knew where knowledge was reposed in. I shared the views Adeniyi advanced in his article “The Vanishing Messiah” because our Yoruba brothers and sisters of the Southwest Nigeria said clearly and demonstrated it with their votes that Obasanjo was neither the Moses nor the Joshua, not to talk of a whole messiah Nigeria needed in 1999.His messianic dispositions and claims were fake and dubious.

But some of our northern brothers, out of selfish agenda and naivety over-rated Obasanjo and foisted him on the nation. Today they know better than the rest of us that Obasanjo has brought nothing but more troubles on Nigeria . That is why I am writing: Obasanjo and Nigeria ’s troubles. Even T.Y. Danjuma who threatened to go on exile if Obasanjo did not emerge President now says that “Obasanjo is the most toxic leader that Nigeria has produced so far. A country that took him out from jail and made him a president; he abused Nigeria , he deceived Nigeria and he deserves a second term in prison and we will make sure he ends up there.” To buttress the fact that Obasanjo is evil to Nigeria , in a recent interview with the Sunday Independent the former Managing Director of Daily Times, Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, a very close associate of Obasanjo had this to say on his eight year reign.

“I am just angry and bitter with him not for what happened between us but what he did to the country. He had the opportunity to change the country. He had the opportunity to become the (Winston) Churchill, the (Charles) De Gaulle of this country and he squandered it. It is so sad! This is somebody I was so close to and sometimes in New York , I never thought he would ever come back to power. When he won the election I resigned my job, my boss and colleagues thought I was crazy. As far as I was concerned I wanted to be part of this reformation of the country and I was so sure that this man was the one who was going to do it.”

The man, Obasanjo did not do it because of his evil nature. This satanic value was even acknowledged by his great supporter and loyalist Sule Lamido who said in the Weekly Trust of February 9 that “If there is anybody who benefited from the evils of Obasanjo, he is Atiku.” Really, I don’t understand how anyone benefits from evil but it makes a whole lot of meaning to me that Obasanjo was evil and so plagued Nigeria . I am happy with this confirmation.

The unofficial and regrettable debate is on, concerning the real amount Obasanjo wasted in the power sector. President Umaru Yar’dua himself told the World Bank team in Nigeria led by an Obasanjo’s former minister, Oby Ezekwesiri that $10 billion dollars was squandered in the power sector with no results while Speaker Dimeji Bankole of the House Representatives says it is $16 billion dollars. Speaking to the Guardian newspaper of Monday, February 18, 2008, Senator Ben Obi, a member of Senate Committee on Power in the Obasanjo regime but now the Vice-Presidential candidate of the Action Congress in the 2007 elections said Obasanjo spent between $15 billion and $16 billion dollars on the power sector.

We have not started talking of the Oil and gas, Steel, agriculture, education health, elections, works and so many other sectors of the economy and politics where his children became big contractors and consultants, looting the nation’s treasury with reckless abandon and a lot of landed property and investments all over the country and beyond. Only God himself knows the amount of troubles and evil Obasanjo brought on this nation; because only Him too has the capacity to deliver the country and its people .My prayer is that the God of justice, love and peace will never abandon Nigeria and the numerous citizens who are innocently praying daily that His will be done and for God to bring His kingdom down.

Ugo Jim-Nwoko, a Political Scientist wrote from

Ngor-Okpala

Imo State.