Jonathan Is Obasanjo’s Worthy Successor By Okey Ndibe

Nigeria’s crisis of leadership has
grown so malignant that one is
frequently tempted to cry, “Where is
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti when we need
him?” The latest distraction is news
that former President Olusegun
Obasanjo and his posse are at war
with President Goodluck Jonathan
and his circle. Were Fela alive today,
he would have deployed his
rhetorical genius to examine this
astonishing drama. Fela had this
inimitable facility for finding the
right expressive idiom to lay bare
the machinations of “authority
people.”
Trust Fela: he would have come up
with the most eloquent phrase for
the absurdity playing itself out in
Nigeria, the “government magic”
behind the supposed feud between a
man, Obasanjo, and his beloved son,
Jonathan.
At any rate, that musical maestro
with a prescient philosophic acumen
would have recognized the precise
nature of Nigeria’s tragedy-in-
progress. We are starved for true,
tested, focused leadership. We
desire – and, I dare hope, deserve –
a leadership that understands that
the space called Nigeria is woefully
backward in every index that counts.
Nigerians are hungry for a
leadership willing and able to meet
the arduous challenge of
humanizing our environment.
Instead, we are being treated, once
again, to some silly, inelegant
theater that presumes to be a war.
The latest incarnation of this
manufactured war was provoked by
Oby Ezekwesili – a former minister
and due process czar in the
Obasanjo Presidency. In a speech at
the University of Nigeria, Nsukka,
Ms. Ezekwesili (most recently a top
official of the World Bank) implied
that the Umaru Yar’Adua and
Jonathan administrations had
irresponsibly squandered much of
the nearly $70 billion they inherited
in foreign reserves. You’d think that
she had questioned the law of
gravity for the fury of the response
that issued from Mr. Jonathan’s
coterie. She was pilloried as a liar,
categorized as a yeoman for Mr.
Obasanjo, accused of elephantine
wastage during her ministerial stint,
and described as unworthy of
engagement in a debate she called
for. In Nigerian parlance, she was
both “rubbished” and “finished.”
The Ezekwesili World War was still
simmering when Mr. Obasanjo
opened up a different sector of
conflict. Last week, several Nigerian
newspapers culled an interview in
which Mr. Obasanjo, again, censured
Mr. Jonathan for failing to arrest
Boko Haram’s terror scourge. In a
fierce response, one of Mr.
Jonathan’s aides told Obasanjo
what the present administration
thinks of him – not much!
This whole messy affair should
disturb Nigerians because, as an
American friend of mine would say,
there’s nothing there. It is a typical
political exercise, a concatenation of
attacks and counter-attacks in
which nothing as substantial as a
principle is at stake. It’s an ego-
driven, feigned war between two
men – Obasanjo and Jonathan –
and their two camps. But the two
sides share the same fundamental
outlook on misgoverning Nigeria
and impoverishing our lives.
At heart, both Mr. Obasanjo and his
protégé, Mr. Jonathan, are one. For
all of Obasanjo’s veiled and direct
criticisms of the late Mr. Yar’Adua
and Mr. Jonathan, the fact remains
that he foisted both men on the
Peoples Democratic Party as
candidates. Obasanjo was the
closest thing to an imperial
president. He could easily have
chosen any other pair and forced
the PDP to acquiesce in his choice.
Instead, he insisted on a Yar’Adua
hobbled by grave illness and a
Jonathan whose record in public
office – as a deputy governor and
governor – was far from impressive.
And he was the ubiquitous, visible
campaigner-in-chief for the two
men. He dominated each campaign
event. At each stop, he seized the
podium to vouch for his self-chosen
successors. He told Nigerians that
the tag team of Yar’Adua and
Jonathan was the only one to
safeguard, sustain and build on his
achievements as the (self-
proclaimed) founder of modern
Nigeria – never mind that his tenure
was tall on propaganda and short
on real, enduring accomplishments.
Call me a sucker for conspiracy
theories if you wish, but I suspect
that Mr. Obasanjo knew exactly
what he was doing when he decided
on his successors – and underwrote
their “landslide” triumph in an
election he notoriously declared a
do-or-die affair. Nigerians had
denied Obasanjo his fantasy about a
third term in office. If you ask me,
then, I’d hazard that a miffed
Obasanjo set out to give us grief. He
designed a future in which he could
assail the men he installed in office
as weak, confused and ineffectual –
and be assured of our collective
assent and corroboration.
Those possessed of a long memory
should not be fooled. Often, I receive
telephone calls from friends or
acquaintances who argue that
Obasanjo’s presidency was better
than those of Mr. Yar’Adua and Mr.
Jonathan. On such occasions, I give
two responses. One is to remind my
interlocutor that it makes little sense
to apply the word “better” in
discussing three mediocre, middling
presidencies. It strikes me as odd to
describe a pupil who scores 30% in
an exam as better than another who
scored 26%. The important fact is
that both students FAILED. Beyond
that, I also stipulate that the
Yar’Adua and Jonathan
administrations ought to be properly
seen as extensions of Obasanjo’s
legacy.
Life for everyday Nigerians
continues to deteriorate, to descend
into ever more brutish, nasty states.
Mr. Jonathan’s apologists boast
about improvements in the power
sector. Yet, during my recent visit to
Nigeria, I visited a friend whose area
had not had one second of electric
power in five straight days. Of what
use is it to tell such a man that
Nigeria now generates twice the
quantity of megawatts from the
levels when Mr. Obasanjo misran
the country?
Though he’s no Fela, presidential
spokesman Reuben Abati last week
struck a plausible note when he
called yesterday’s men and women
hounding Mr. Jonathan by a fitting
name: hypocrites. Ms. Ezekwesili
was once hyped as a champion of
due process. Yet, that gloss was
extremely thin. She served in an
administration that blew $10 billion
or more on the power sector – with
nothing to show for it. Did due
process go to sleep as Mr. Obasanjo
paid huge sums of cash to
companies that simply disappeared,
never to do the job that was paid for
– or to be seen again? She was also
there when US authorities caught
one of Mr. Obasanjo’s closest aides
for ferrying close to $200,000 in raw
cash on a presidential jet into New
York City. Part of the money was
used to buy a Mercedes Benz, and
close to $50,000 to purchase
equipment for Mr. Obasanjo’s farm
in Ota, Ogun State. That bizarre
transaction violated both US and
Nigerian laws about cash
movements. US authorities extracted
a fine of $26,000 from the
president’s aide. Nigerian
authorities pretended that – to use
a popular Nigerian saying –
“nothing spoil.” Did Ms. Ezekwesili
ever raise any objection to that
scandal, or insist that the
presidential aide face the legal
consequences?
It bears repeating: the spat between
the Obasanjo and Jonathan crowds
is not informed by any differences in
principle. Why are we even arguing
about the size of foreign reserves
when our citizens have no decent
hospitals to go to, our schools –
from elementary to university – are
dilapidated, our roads are a
shambles, power supply remains
woeful, and most Nigerians have to
pee and defecate in the open, like
animals?
Serious leaders around the world
spend their waking hours thinking
up strategies for improving the lot
of their people, and positioning their
nations as players in the global
economy. Nigeria’s pretend-leaders
spend half of their waking hours
scheming over who, among a set of
undesirable parasites, is to become
the ruling party’s next chairman of
the Board of Trustees; the other half
on depraved conspiracies to corner
scandalous sums of public funds for
their private use!
In the end, the Obasanjo and
Jonathan camps do not disagree on
a fundamental point: that the
mindless, unconscionable screwing
of hapless Nigerians should
continue. In fact, to speak about
them as two camps is a misnomer.
They have a shared consensus on
the things that matter to them.
They hurl accusations of corruption
across the faux lines, but they will
never unmask themselves – never
let Nigerians into the real gist, or
initiate any serious prosecution.
They’re staunch believers in the
sharing of oil blocks among
themselves – at the price of a
breeze. They believe it’s better to
transport themselves and members
of their families to foreign hospitals
rather than fund modern healthcare
for all Nigerians. It makes more
sense to them to buy up more
private jets and acquire more
swanky homes abroad than fix our
roads. They will continue to cart
away billions of dollars each year in
security votes and constituency
allowances. They don’t mind in the
least that our police academies are
unfit even for rodent habitation; they
see to it that those of their number
guilty of stealing billions of naira
from the police pension fund should
receive nothing harsher than the
slightest slap on the wrist. No, they
are in no hurry to mandate public
declaration of assets. They’re even
less willing to consider erasure of
the odious constitutional provision
that grants immunity to governors
and the president when they commit
serious crimes.
My hunch was always this: that
once all the smoke disappears,
Nigerians will awake to see Mr.
Obasanjo hugging President
Jonathan, his beloved political son,
the two men beaming like sin. That
scenario played out last Sunday as
Mr. Obasanjo joined President
Jonathan in a photo-op worship at
Aso Rock chapel. That was proof
that the so-called disaffection
between the two “gladiators” is a
smokescreen. There’s nothing in the
ongoing fray that cannot be settled
in the usual manner: the award of a
juicy contract or two, or the trading
of one or two oil blocks.
Please follow me on twitter @
okeyndibe
Email: ( okeyndibe@gmail.com )