POLITICS

Obasanjo, the letter writer

BY TRIBUNE ONLINE

JANUARY 25, 2018

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo came down hard on President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday in a press statement in which he asked the latter to perish the thought of running for election in 2019 as his performance since his assumption of office was a betrayal of the confidence of the Nigerian people which made them vote for him in 2015.

According to Obasanjo in the statement, being Nigeria’s president required being active 25/7, not even 24/7, suggesting that the incumbent’s state of health made him unfit for the hard demands of the office.

But publicly going against sitting presidents who fail to live up to his expectations is characteristic of Obasanjo. While many Nigerians will still remember the scathing letter he wrote to former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2013, it was not the first of such letters written by the Army General-turned politician who had had the unprecedented privilege of leading Nigeria for 11 and a half years. Usually, Obasanjo’s public condemnation of presidents or head of states signals the beginning of the end of such administrations.

The first victim of Obasanjo’s public attack was Alhaji Sheu Shagari, who was President from October 1, 1979, to December 31, 1983. Shortly after his inauguration for a second term as President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces on October 1, 1983, Obasanjo publicly criticized Alhaji Shagari, who succeeded him in 1979, for poor management of the economy, which had subjected millions of Nigerians to untold hardship. He also complained about the level of corruption in the country. The condemnation was like a fillip to the military as they struck and sacked the Shagari administration a few weeks later.

Obasanjo also went after General Ibrahim Babangida when he was Military President. Babangida had introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme, which had escalated the suffering of the poor. Obasanjo took up the role of the public defender when he called on the administration to ensure that the SAP had “a human face and the milk of human kindness.”

Obasanjo did not stop his tackling of the administration with that as he ceaselessly took the administration to task over its seemingly endless transition programme. Even after the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election which Chief Moshood Abiola won, Obasanjo did not relent on his attack of the administration until Babangida was forced to step aside on August 27, 1993, after eight years as Military President.

The dreaded General Sani Abacha was not spared from Obasanjo’s vitriolic. While delivering a keynote address at The Arewa House during the reign of Abacha, Obasanjo took the administration to the cleaners, describing it as a visionless regime. He did not stop at that point, he also granted an interview to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) where he alleged that the Abacha administration was squandering the nation’s resources like a drunken sailor. However, unlike Babangida, who ignored Obasanjo’s attacks, the dark-goggled General did not spare his former Commander in Chief as he implicated Obasanjo in a coup attempt. The military panel that was set up by Abacha found Obasanjo guilty and condemned him to prison. He remained in prison till the end came to the administration when General Abacha died.

Obasanjo was released by General Abdulsalami Abubakar who became the Head of State after the demise of Abacha. He later joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), contested the presidential election and became the second executive president of the country. He was in office from May 29, 1999, till May 28, 2007.

Obasanjo was succeeded by Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. The amity between Yar’Adua and Obasanjo soon evanesced because of the latter’s dissatisfaction with Yar’Adua’s performance. To make his displeasure known, Obasanjo wrote Yar’Adua early in his administration with the intention of making it clear to him the necessity for him to scale up his performance.

In the letter, Obasanjo wrote, “As you know, for the next few months, perhaps years, your government will be regarded as being in the penumbra of the Obasanjo regime given the situation that brought you into office. Against this background, you must toil to carve out a unique identity for yourself and administration. To do this, you must choose wisely your vision and the folks in your cabinet to drive the vision.”

However, the letter brought a wedge between Obasanjo and his successor.

Yar’Adua did not enjoy the best of health. He had issues with his kidney which made him bedridden in Saudi Arabia for quite a while. As a result of his state of health, while leaving Nigeria, he could not properly hand over to his deputy which put the nation in a state of flux. Obasanjo and other leaders visited the former president in the Saudi hospital where he was receiving treatment. On his return to the country after his visit to the ailing president, Obasanjo relayed to the press the poor state of the Yar’Adua’s health and the need to look beyond him. This kick-started a series of activities which culminated in the Doctrine of Necessity which provided the platform for the emergence of the then Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan, as the Acting President.

When Yar’Adua died in 2010, Jonathan was inaugurated as President. In 2011, he was presented by the PDP as its presidential candidate, with Obasanjo emerging as one of his major supporters. But within the first two years of Jonathan’s presidency, Obasanjo had become piqued with him. Initially, this was concealed from the public until Obasanjo went public in a letter to Jonathan on December 2, 2013.

In the letter titled “Before It Is Too Late,” Obasanjo wrote that he chose to write a public letter to Jonathan because he had earlier written four private ones which were neither acknowledged nor responded to.

He further stated that he made his letter public due to a number of reasons, among which he said were, “One, the current situation and consequent possible outcome dictate that I should, before the door closes on reason and promotion of national interest, alert you to the danger that may be lurking in the corner.

“Two, none of the four or more letters that I have written to you in the past two years or so has elicited an acknowledgement nor any response. Three, people close to you, if not yourself, have been asking, what does Obasanjo want?

“Four, I could sense a semblance of the situation that we are gradually getting into and the situation we fell into as a nation during the Abacha era. Five, everything must be done to guard, protect and defend our fledgeling democracy, nourish it and prevent bloodshed.

“Six, we must move away from advertently or inadvertently dividing the country along weak seams of North-South and Christian-Moslem. Seven, nothing should be done to allow the country to degenerate into economic dormancy, stagnation or retrogression.

“Eight, some of our international friends and development partners are genuinely worried about signs and signals that are coming out of Nigeria. Nine, Nigeria should be in a position to take advantage of the present favourable international interest to invest in Africa – an opportunity that will not be open for too long. Ten, I am concerned about your legacy and your climb-down which you alone can best be the manager of, whenever you so decide.”

Obasanjo, in the letter, warned Jonathan against contesting the 2015 presidential election on the premise that, “Up till two months ago, Mr President, you told me that you have not told anybody that you would contest in 2015.

Though eventually defeated in the 2015 elections, former President Jonathan didn’t take the vibes from Obasanjo lying low as he responded in a letter on December 20, 2013, stating that his failure to respond to the four previous letters was not because he wanted to deride Obasanjo, but that he felt it was not necessary to acknowledge the letters, having discussed them verbally.

Jonathan in the letter tried to counter every point raised by Obasanjo in his earlier letter but the deed was done. His greatest supporter had become his greatest antagonist. Obasanjo went all out against Jonathan and he could not survive the onslaught.

In his letter to Buhari, Obasanjo did not hide his intention to go all out against the incumbent to work against his return to office in 2019.

The question now is will Obasanjo be as successful in this self-assigned task of getting Buhari out as he was with the Jonathan project?

Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari, Garba Shehu, then in his capacity as the media aide of former Vice President Abubakar Atiku, wrote in his then back page column with the Nigerian Tribune that “Governments are known to rise and fall with Obasanjo’s letters”.

In the article, titled “What are the options for Dr Jonathan” and published on December 18, 2013, Shehu alleged that Obasanjo, since the release of his letter to former President Jonathan, has come under intense scrutiny relating to his motives, rather than the message and this is for a good reason.

Among others, he wrote: “Over the last three or so decades since he left office as military Head of State, the former president is known to have written letters to each and all of the governments that followed his own, with such letter coming at crises points in the lives of those administrations or, where non-existed fomenting trouble of the sitting government. Governments are known to rise and fall with Obasanjo’s letters.

“When they criticize President Obasanjo for his letter, many say the former leader is merely shedding crocodile tears because he, as the architect of successive transitions since he left office, is solely responsible for bringing the country to this sorry pass.

“They say that he, in consort with his cronies such as Nuhu Ribadu, and Nasir el-Rufai, and without the least consideration for national interest, chose a sick man, Umar Yar’ Adua and Dr Jonathan Goodluck, a man they thought was an idiot, and imposed them on the population in order to retain power and exercise it from his farmhouse in Ota. If Yar’ Adua as governor could not govern well a state like Kaduna, it is better imagined how he could deal with a complex setting that is the Nigerian federation.

“It is clear from all of these things that Obasanjo and his gang have mortally harmed the country and morally speaking, there is no basis on which they can pontificate to anyone.

“This obvious hypocrisy notwithstanding, there are many national interest issues in that letter which ought not to be swept under the carpet. As a senior lawyer said in the press last week, take the message and cut the hand (of the giver). So far, the president and his people have only been personalizing the issues. We have only heard the reflexive response from Rueben Abati, the president’s spokesman, charging the former president with insincerity and bad faith.

“The president has no option but to give a reflective response. He needs to show a full contextual understanding; have a correct reading of the mood of the nation and come clean before the citizens on all charges contained in that letter. That is the only way he can redeem the government he leads. A good and honest government will lend ears to good advice wherever it is coming from. If not, this government is doomed to fail. The latter ought not to become true of the Jonathan government…

“The letter issue is big, big issue. It calls for a response beyond the reflexes and rash abuse coming from the president’s camp. What the nation expects is a reflective, blow-by-blow, point-by-point account of why the government should not be held guilty as charged.”

Sunday, February 4, 2018