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Dotun Oyeniyi
BSc.(Hons); LLB (Hons); LLM (Lond)
 Author, Economist and Practicing Attorney
London, England

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Now that the courts have ordered the FEC to pronounce the fitness or otherwise of the president.  That the president’s health appears to be more perilous that the FEC is making us to believe.  That both the anti and pro Yar’Adua groups are becoming more pugnacious each day.  That OBJ and members of the PDP board of trustees have fallen apart on Yar’Adua’s issue.  That the vice president has been exposed as unassertive and pusillanimous.  That a section of the North wants to sacrifice the constitution in order to satisfy the PDP’s zoning arrangement.  The next few weeks and months in Nigeria promise to be very interesting.  If Nigeria is able, as it always does, to peacefully navigate itself out of this glaring political quagmire, goodluck.  If however, anything untoward comes out of it, blame no one but the ‘all knowing’ Ota General.

 

RUNNING A SICK NATION FROM A SICK BED: BLAME NO ONE BUT OBASANJO
 by Dotun Oyeniyi
 

History, so we all say, has a way of repeating itself.  However, history is only able to repeat itself because human beings tend to repeat our acts or inactions.  History is not self-made.  It is made   out of the deeds of human beings.   So when a bad history is repeated, it is either the author of that history is a gloating sadist, deriving some pleasure out of a bad situation or an obdurate personality refusing to learn from previous errors.

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (OBJ), in spite of how benevolent fate has been to him, remains an obdurate character; intolerant of others’ reasoning and probably refusing to learn from previous errors.  The ongoing hullabaloo over the health of President Yar’Adua and the hopeless situation in which a sick president, bedridden in an unknown Saudi Hospital; remains uncompromising in his resolve, to run a sick nation from a sick bed; the most culpable is OBJ.

Why?  Because OBJ imposed President Yar’adua on all of us, possibly with the best of intentions but the worst of outcomes, as he is a man that is too obdurate to learn from history or explore alternative voice of reason, especially if those voices emanated from quarters he regarded as enemies’.

Let us quickly cast our minds back to 1979.  This same umpire paved the way for Alhaji Shehu Shagari, one of the least competent of the then five presidential aspirants to emerge as Nigeria’s president.  Though, Shagari’s party, the NPN appeared larger and more national than others.  Certainly more widespread than its other two closest rivals, Awolowo’s UPN and Zik’s NPP, both of which remained insular to the West and East respectively.  Nonetheless, the NPN failed to secure the prescribed 25% of the votes in two-thirds of the 19 states that Nigeria then had.  It had 25% or more in just 12 states, in the 13th state – Kano, NPN had just 20.38%. FEDECO had worked on the logical and conventional position that 13 states was the two-thirds of 19; at least before Chief Richard Akinjide came out with the incredulous interpretation that two-thirds of 19 was not 13 but 12 and two-thirds states.  So intriguing and confusing.  Faced with this naughty issue; the FEDECO chairman – Michael Ani and the Attorney General, Mr Nnamani were reported to have sought OBJ’s opinion.  His position was reported to be in support of the new interpretation, thereby allowing Shagari to become a president by mathematical abracadabra.   Had he insisted that FEDECO should not move the goalpost after the goal had been missed by the NPN, there would have been an electoral college, as prescribed by the constitution, and the frenzy of activities aimed towards a coalition on the part of UPN, NPP and GNPP immediately after the elections was sure to block Shagari from becoming the president and Nigeria would have been spared the terrible misgovernance, profligacy and mismanagement of the Shagari years, which, in my opinion was the beginning of Nigeria’s contemporary problems.  

28 years after, the pendulum of history has swung 360 degrees to repeat itself, and the same OBJ was back in the saddle as an umpire who had, yet again, the most important say on who would succeed him as President.  Then out of the blues emerged, on the back of Obasanjo influence, a Umaru Musa Yar’Adua – an insipid, vigourless, colourless and uninspiring character with a reputation for saving money for its state as governor.  Only OBJ and his inner caucus of the PDP were privy to the heart of a complex political tapestry, woven around OBJ’s obduracy, that led to the saddling of a sick man with a weak heart, with the mammoth job of taking charge of a sick nation whose own heart has been weakened by staggering and widespread corruption at all levels.

In picking Yar’Adua, Obasanjo was out to deliver a callous political blow on Abubakar Atiku who had stepped on Obasanjo’s toes somehow.  Atiku was the arrowhead of the PDM political group of the Late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua.  It was partly on the crest of the PDM group in the PDP that Obasanjo rode to the presidency.  By picking the juniour Yar’Adua, the very last of PDM’s carpet was being pulled from under Atiku’s feet.  Obasanjo is an obdurate personality who will often gloat over the misfortunes of his enemies, real and perceived.  And he did exactly to Atiku in Atiku failed to become president.  But why pick Yar’Adua of all potential candidates?

Though the PDP as a party is a bunch of corrupt politicians and political gangsters with no known ideals, but there is still a sprinkle of good politicians of Northern extraction in the its fold, who can do better than Yar’Adua, but the choice of Yar’Adua was borne out of obduracy – Obasanjo’s choice is final!    It is this same obduracy that led to the exit of Audu Ogbe as PDP’s chairman. Ogbe’s exit from the PDP robbed the party of all remnants of decorum, principles, objectivity, moderation; voice of reason and possible checks on Obasanjo’s overbearing influence.  Ogbe is one of the finest politicians of this era – disciplined, modest, frank, frugal, selfless and prudent.  As a minister under Shagari, he distinguished himself by refusing to join the profligate party.

Even the choice of the vice president still fell completely on Obasanjo’s shoulder and the reason why he preferred the lacklustre Goodluck Jonathan over Donald Duke remains opaque.   If what we have seen of Jonathan in the last 30 months is anything to go by; especially his current mendacious complicity with the federal executive council (FEC) about the state of the President’s health, he is the other side of the Yar’adua coin.  Those who had taken to the streets and those who had gone to the courts for a single purpose of forcing common sense to prevail and get the country running again under Jonathan have nothing to regret.  But those who have thrown down the gauntlet in the hope that a Goodluck might do better than a Umaru will end up being thoroughly disappointed.

Now that the courts have ordered the FEC to pronounce the fitness or otherwise of the president.  That the president’s health appears to be more perilous that the FEC is making us to believe.  That both the anti and pro Yar’Adua groups are becoming more pugnacious each day.  That OBJ and members of the PDP board of trustees have fallen apart on Yar’Adua’s issue.  That the vice president has been exposed as unassertive and pusillanimous.  That a section of the North wants to sacrifice the constitution in order to satisfy the PDP’s zoning arrangement.  The next few weeks and months in Nigeria promise to be very interesting.  If Nigeria is able, as it always does, to peacefully navigate itself out of this glaring political quagmire, goodluck.  If however, anything untoward comes out of it, blame no one but the ‘all knowing’ Ota General.

 

 

 

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