by Wole Olabanji

“To formally give up secession and report for reappointment and redeployment: Philip Effiong, Patrick Amadi…”

With these words, Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo announced the formal surrender of the Biafran army, handing over its captured senior officers to the Nigerian Head of State General Yakubu Gowon at a press conference held at Dodan Barracks Lagos.

They were also the words with which he recorded in indelible ink his grand entry into the annals of the most influential black nation in the world. It is four decades after and he is now retired, not just as a general and from all active service (somewhat); and he has managed to feature prominently in a disproportionately large portion of every chapter that has been written since.

From hero of the civil war, he became the second-in-command who reluctantly stepped in when his boss, Murtala Mohammed was assassinated. He was the military ruler who swam against the surging tide of coup d’états on the continent, and then the civilian who received power back from the military, which had truncated the democratic journey of the second republic and for almost two decades.

Because I am involved

It is not surprising therefore that he has found it impossible to leave the stage – a man many now consider to be no more than a meddlesome old man searching desperately for relevance; any relevance.

What Nigerian presidents do when they retire is hardly the stuff of suspense thrillers. Generally, they retire to the cookie cutter existence of making bland public statements, building a library, sometimes writing books that hardly say anything and then touring the world to observe elections, give speeches or raise funds to fight polio, or some other third world disease.

But then there is Olusegun Obasanjo. This man has been leader of the Nigerian nation for three times. Yet, two cycles after his last adventure, he still finds the energy, time, and sufficient appetite for mischief to stay in the middle of the murderous fray of partisan politics.

In fact, the rife view is that Obasanjo sees Nigeria as a corporation – his corporation – in which, having become statute barred from remaining as chief executive after 2007, he has schemed for the emergence of a lame duck management team so he can continue to call the shots as an invisible but all powerful board chairman.

Indeed, it has become clear he has no intentions to retire at all.

Just take a look at the newspapers. It really doesn’t require any exceptional ability to read between the lines for anyone who has read Obasanjo’s recent letter to President Goodluck Jonathan to realise that, asides whatever substantive issues he might have raised in the 18-pager, there was an unmistakable soreness at what he perceived as being ignored.

For a man who had gained, and secured, increasing ubiquity in Nigerian and global affairs over a nearly unbroken period of four decades, the prospect of joining the ranks of “yesterday’s men” is evidently not one he will accept without a fight.

In literal personification of ‘old soja neva die’, the letter to the president was a commander’s rallying cry to his troops as well as a brazen launch of hostilities – aptly headlined by The Punch edition of 12 December 2013: “Obasanjo Bombs Jonathan”.

Indeed, it is difficult to divine Obasanjo’s reaction to the fallout of that letter. Just as old munitions tend to backfire when ignited, the letter had the unintended consequence of setting off a series of other explosive letters – including one from his daughter that would cripple any mere mortal – and raising a storm of questions, some of which now portend mortal threats to his already badly battered reputation. Still, didn’t it make him centre of attention?

Not my will

In the morning of 13 February, 1976; as the black Mercedes sedan he was being driven in slowed at a junction in front of the Federal Secretariat Ikoyi, a group of armed soldiers walked up to it and assassinated General Murtala Ramat Mohammed.

He had taken power in a bloodless coup the previous July. He lost along with his life in a hail of bullets, shattered glass and the spattered blood of his driver and orderly.

The putsch ultimately failed and the responsibility fell on Lt. Gen Olusegun Obasanjo, then Chief of Staff of Supreme Headquarters to assume office as Head of State and see out the transition programme to civilian rule. It was to his credit that in an era when military coups loomed menacingly over the whole of Africa, South America, the Middle East, South East Asia and even East and Central Europe, he kept fate with the transition programme Murtala had designed, and handed power to Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1979. He subsequently retired to his farm in Ota.

If accepting the Biafran surrender had launched him into an illustrious national career in 1970, leading the military to surrender to civilian rule and head back to the barracks almost a decade later was more than a fitting denouement – it was the sort of ‘black swan’ credential a discerning person could easily parlay into an enduring global brand, and he almost did.

Unfortunately, Achilles had his heel.

When fate chooses to be extremely kind to a person, it tends to chose those who also have a fatal flaw; in this case that of those who have the good fortune of strolling onto the stage when the spotlight is shining. After a while, they tend to be consumed by the notion that the shining light beamed from and not on them.

Having done the uncommon, Obasanjo found himself in the midst of a global fete. He seized the moment and founded the African Leadership Forum; became a prominent member of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group; and even mounted a respectable bid for the seat of the UN Secretary General in 1991.

No doubt, it became difficult to continue to view himself simply as a chicken farmer (an occupation he turned to after his first turn as Head of State). It is almost certainly the period of his life that he became enamoured of the idea of Obasanjo, Haloed Gift to Mankind.

Indeed, there is no other way of understanding why, in 2005, two years into his second tenure as civilian president of Nigeria, deeming it impossible to find any Nigerian apart from himself who had the capacity to lead the nation, he began to (as those who worked with him have confirmed in public statements, articles and that pesky biography by his former ‘boy’, Nasir el-Rufai) surreptitiously hatch a plan to amend the constitution. He wanted to run for a third term in office.

For a man who famously wrote in his earlier memoirs that it was ‘not his will’ to lead the country and promptly proved it by how quickly he handed over to a civilian government, it was starkly ironic that as a civilian president, he would now scheme to perpetuate himself in power.

History had turned full circle. Fate had spent three decades grooming its prey; it was now ready to shear it. Obasanjo’s third term bid collapsed in spectacular ignominy, the swift after therefore dutifully unravelling a reputation he spent 30 years cultivating.

Whether he accepts it or not (and clearly the stubborn ‘Owu’ chief would die first), that series of events permanently damaged his reputation, and his rare place in history.

President without precedent

It isn’t difficult to see how easily Obasanjo might have fallen into the error of seeing himself as the anointed one.

When he was thrust into office in 1976, Nigeria’s GNI/Capita hovered around $490. By the time he handed over to Shagari three years later; it had risen to $620. The combination of Shagari, Buhari, Babangida (who was, in fact, gifted with an oil boom), Shonekan (who, to be fair, was only there for a few weeks), Abacha and Abdulsalami somehow managed to so devastate the economy that in 1999 when Obasanjo was elected as civilian president, the country’s GNI/Capita had plunged to an appalling $270 – less than half of what it was when he left office as military head of state.

As if gifted with the touch of Midas, Obasanjo would then go on to more than triple the figure in eight years, getting it to $970 when he left office in 2007.

This temptation for self-canonisation gains even more urgency when viewed in the context of being the president that wiped off Nigeria’s almost $40billion foreign debt. Given the national mood at the time, the view prevalent that occupants of the office had literally sold Nigerians into slavery by accumulating such a huge debt, describing Obasanjo as a messiah might have been viewed as more literal than figurative.

His exposure and considerable eminence in the global community translated into big aspirations. Policy was relatively well articulated and adapted to context like NEEDS, SEEDS, LEEDS, which provided a national strategic plan. Significant reforms were designed and pursued: privatisation of key sectors of the economy, monetization of benefits which kick-started the mortgage sector, banking reforms, mainstreaming of PFIs/PPPs, improving transparency in the extractive industries, jumpstarting and telecoms and energy.

Importantly, concrete steps were taken to ensure sustainability by passing legislation and building institutions to keep the reforms alive. This led to the establishment of critical institutions like Bureau for Public Enterprises, Debt Management Office, Bureau for Public Procurement, Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and Independent Corrupt Practices Commission.

Indeed, after all said and done, his was a time of clarity – clarity in vision, clarity in policy, clarity in execution.

Looking against this backdrop and an economy that was growing at a brisk 6-7% annually in the middle of his second term, and perhaps reminding himself of how everything collapsed the last time he was away from the saddle, his mind must have been made up – he couldn’t leave just when Nigeria needed him most. And, in a country like, where a leader never lacks for an endless stream of professional praise-singers, it would have been difficult for him to believe otherwise.

Unfortunately, as Richard Farson writes in Management of the Absurd, “every strength is a weakness”. The single minded unyieldingness that had helped him accomplish so much in life calcified into a hard headed stubbornness that made it impossible for him to listen to those like his daughter Iyabo – or his other ‘adopted’ daughter Obiageli Ezekwesili – who
had the courage to point out his folly.

Generals are supposed to know which battles to fight and from which to beat a hasty,tactical retreat, but apparently, Chief Obasanjo no longer had the battle instincts of Gen. Obasanjo. He pursued the goal too far, left flanks too open, and by the time he knew the battle was lost, it was too late.

A crater in the armour

Indeed, one of the many ironies of Obasanjo’s life lies in the fact that, for all the impressive effort at building institutions, he will yet make a long list of African leaders who did the most to undermine the concept of institutions and the rule of law.

It wasn’t just the fact that bigmanism was a cultural pathology that was endemic in the continent; it was the glaring character deficiencies – one that has always existed for anyone who has paid attention to the man, that made (and has always made) Obasanjo conduct himself like a parallel (and autonomous) institution.

On 24 May last year, 35 members of the Nigerian Governors Forum held an election to pick a new chairman. Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers polled 19 of the votes while the remaining 16 were cast in favour of Plateau’s Jonah Jang. As apparent as it might seem to observers who the winner of the ballot was, the election has thrown the body into a protracted dispute with both contestants claiming victory while not disputing the tally. Around this time, members of the Rivers House of Assembly sympathetic to the President – or at least his wife – had attempted to turn the constitutions on its head by impeaching Governor Amaechi
with five lawmakers, as the nation watched, incredulous.

Incredulous, but not actually shocked.

The foundation for this kind of tragic malfeasance was in fact laid many years before by Obasanjo, in whose time as president tacit approval was given to the impeachment in October 2006 of Governor Joshua Dariye of Plateau by eight members of a 24-member state House of Assembly. A similar plot was played out using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to blackmail the Bayelsa House of Assembly. It followed the same pattern of illegality and impeached the governor, DSP Alamieyeseigha.

Where impeachments were considered too civil, kidnap and terrorism were considered legitimate, even moral, strategies by a Presidency convinced of its own infallibility. Between 2003 and 2005, with the tacit support of President Obasanjo (support so strong it led the late Chinua Achebe to reject a national honour); the Anambra police command in close cooperation with hoodlums said to be on the payroll of politician Chris Uba; terrorised the state, kidnapping the elected governor on one occasion, and setting parts of the government house on fire on another.

To even the most casual observer in that season of anomie, it was clear that although Nigeria had transited to civil rule, Obasanjo was somewhat confused by the title of Commander-in-Chief – acting as though he was still leading the 3rd Marine Commando.

As he notoriously repeated in 2006/2007 while campaigning for Yar’Adua, his approach to power is “do or die” – essentially operating in a martial mode where the law was only useful when it was convenient. When it wasn’t, he was in his elements giving orders to sack entire communities like Zaki Biam and Odi – soldiers ordered to shoot everything in sight that moved.

Supporters of Obasanjo try to justify his tactics with the usual argument – lesser evil for greater good. As far as they could see, he was ultimately pursuing a good end by removing  thieving and incompetent leaders or citizens who insisted on burning down the nation.

One wonders what they would say to that evening of 23 December 2001, when Chief Bola Ige, Attorney General of the Federation, who was killed while asleep in his country home. The policemen who were assigned to guard him had inexplicably left their duty post when the assassins came calling.

As with all other acts of terror during his time in office, this too was unresolved. Indeed, the sheer number of unresolved politically motivated assassinations during Obasanjo’s time as president – a cancer that, suddenly, ceased when he left office suggests that the problem was far more sinister.

Those who should know

In 1980, Kalakuta Records released a Fela Anikulapo Kuti album titled “International Thief Thief” (ITT) containing the 25-minute hit track from which the album got its name. It was twenty five minutes of Fela at his most irreverent, insightful and fearless. As always, Fela’s ‘yabbis-spiced’ lyrics called out the hypocrisy of western foreign policy and trade practices,
as well as the local accomplices.

This particular song cheekily took the acronym of International Telegraph and Telecommunications to lampoon the fraud perpetrated by the company contracted to implement a nationwide rural telephony project. The song made the clear implication that ITT colluded with Obasanjo to rob Nigerians.

It is instructive that in 1980, just a few months after Gen. Obasanjo had gone against a global tide to hand over power to an elected government; at a time when he was arguably at the zenith of his global popularity and people everywhere were waxing lyrical about his courage and character, Fela characteristically saw things differently: through the garlands and confetti, all he saw was a common thief.

Fela’s ITT makes clear that Obasanjo has older questions to answer than those around the $12 billion dollar IPP projects (Independent Power Plant), Transcorp’s shareholding or the incredible wealth that followed him out of office and into a palatial mansion at the top of Abeokuta, from where he oversees vast business interests in education, agriculture, and energy.

But it isn’t just outsiders like Fela who have always seen Obasanjo for what he is – and how he would rather be seen. Indeed, in the case of Nigeria’s the-time leader, the bible is completely right – the enemies of a man come from his own household.

There is his son, ‘Gbenga, who – in 2008 – erupted in public with the salacious accusation that, not only is his father a pathological liar who has deceived Nigerians as regards his real age, but his father is also an incestuous sociopath – sleeping with his own son’s wife and having no apologies for that.

Then, in the same year, his first wife, Oluremi, arrived with her own lurid tales – thoroughly de-constructing a man whose character flaws now appear to have no end. Writing in her auto-biography, ‘Bitter-sweet: My life with Obasanjo’, about her 45-year-old marriage that produced two sons and four daughters, Oluremi painted the picture of a man who is a liar, a thief, a petty husband, a wife-beater, a “master of deception”, one who broke bread with sorcerers while proclaiming himself a man of the bible – overall, a human being thoroughly
without shame or remorse.

“The book is a curious portrait of Obasanjo as a kind, tender and loving person, but whose pride and arrogance later became dominant,” wrote a review in The Nation. “It drips with the narrative of a once caring and romantic man who allegedly became a serial philanderer, often focusing on women quite close to the family. Mrs Obasanjo goes further to describe her husband as “complex” and “a curious subject” who neither forgives nor forgets wrongs done him by others.

“In her words: ’Obasanjo is complex and a master of the art of deception. He is a curious subject. He is self-opinionated. This has become worse nowadays.’ ‘Nowadays’ happened to be his time as Nigeria’s president from 1999.

“It couldn’t come at a worse time for the 72-year-old Mr Obasanjo who has been busily building a new profile for himself as a pan-African statesman second only to Kofi Annan,” wrote another reviewer.

“What ensues is an almost slapstick riot of affairs and breathless highpolitics punctuated with  domestic violence and desperation. And it’s one in which Mama Iyabo is happy to name names.”

Then, on 16 December last year, his once-favourite (at least to the public) daughter, Iyabo made a closing argument in an open 11-page letter to her father first published by Vanguard. In it, she “accused her father of orchestrating a third term for himself as president, cruelty to family members, abandonment of children and grandchildren, and also, a legendary reputation of maltreatment of women.”

Describing Nigeria as “a country where her father and his ilk have helped to create a situation where smart, capable people bend down to imbeciles to survive”, Obasanjo’s first child started the letter titled Open Letter to my Father with a 4th century Chinese proverb: “The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.”

“It brings me no joy to have to write this but since you started this trend of open letters I thought I would follow suit since you don’t listen to anyone anyway,” the letter continued. “The only way to reach you may be to make the public aware of some things. As a child well brought up by my long-suffering mother in Yoruba tradition, I have been reluctant to tell the truth about you but as it seems you still continue to delude yourself about the kind of person you are and I think for posterity’s sake it is time to set the records straight.”

She proceeded to bring down the man who gave her life. Calling him “self-serving”, a “narcissistic megalomaniac” and any other damning adjectives she could find, she narrated, amongst others that, “We, your family, have borne the brunt of your direct cruelty and also suffered the consequences of your stupidity but got none of the benefits of your successes. Of course, anyone around you knows how little respect you have for your children.

“You think our existence on earth is about you. By the way, how many are we? 19, 20, 21? Do you even know? In the last five years, how many of these children have you spoken to? How many grandchildren do you have and when did you last see each of them?”

Given opportunities on print, radio and everywhere else to disown the contents of this letter, Iyabo declined – the “true Obasanjo”, she believed, had to be exposed, and disgraced.

Third wind

To come to the closing chapters of one’s life and have to confront the fact that your children consider you to be, in summary, Satan must be the most depressing feeling anyone can ever have to live with. However, it is to Obasanjo’s credit that he is still able to clown about doing the Gangnam style on international television as he did in 2013 in Ghana while leading an African Union election observer delegation.

Perhaps he takes solace in the incontrovertible fact of his sterling accomplishments in life and government. For those who can wade through the sea of negativity and think about some of his sacrifices and leadership, there are indeed actions of massive positive consequence that he has led.

His principled stand against apartheid abroad and military dictatorship at home tested his courage against some of the most intimidating forces in recent history. In words that only someone on the moral high ground can muster, he memorably chided – openly Margaret Thatcher (then leader of a world power and Nigeria’s colonial masters) in a 1983 letter that should be the pride not only of once-colonised people all over the world, but indeed anyone who has fought tyranny and oppression.

Then, for his insistence on the military staying in their barracks, he drew the ire of the late dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha and ended up in jail under trumped up coup charge. Many thought he would never come out alive.

Less obvious but just as liberating is his effort to wipe off Nigeria’s $40billion debt. Giving the crippling effect of that debt on the economy which plunged the GNI/capita from $620 in 1979 to a paltry $270 in 1999, it is conceivable that the economy of the country might have been so devastated by now as to have led to the collapse of Nigeria’s fragile union. No doubt Nigeria’s credit rating would have been abysmal, making it almost impossible to borrow any more even as debt servicing would have made it impossible to finance the budget.

Unfortunately, with his right hand also comes the left. His continued interventions – interpreted always as selfish and self-absolved by a weary commentariat – in the polity is perhaps proof of his unfamiliarity with irony, a distinct characteristic he shares with much of Nigeria’s leading class.

Indeed, perhaps that is the essence – and beauty – of the Obasanjo brand. In the sense that a father transfers both his good and bad genes to his offspring, this one man who is emblematic of all that is good, bad and desperately ugly in this country can validly, as he has been, be described as the father of modern Nigeria.

To take an instance, having come out of prison and declared himself ‘born again’ (even going on to acquire a post-graduate diploma in theology), his wrenching lack of scruples perfectly reflects the Nigerian penchant for religious rituals and credentials without a commensurate change in character.

Also, his sometimes feverish focus on building a system of public accountability while taking no personal responsibility tells so well the Nigerian leadership – and followership, many will add – story of crass duplicity.Therefore, Modern Nigeria and Obasanjo are somewhat like the chicken and the egg. He mirrors Nigeria in potential and opportunity for global pre-eminence, while neither has so far managed to rise to the fullness of that potential.

There is however one redeeming truth Nigeria shares with Obasanjo: neither can bewritten off.

See other long read pieces HERE