UNTIL former President Olusegun Obasanjo bettered him in bad reputation, former military head of state Ibrahim Babangida came across to Nigerians as the most unrepentant subverter of the national ethos and constitution. General Babangida had annulled the 1993 presidential election adjudged the fairest and freest until then.
Consequently, after two turbulent interregna for that was what they really were, the winner of that election, and a friend of Gen Babangida himself, Moshood Abiola, lost his life in government custody. The events themselves led to the emergence some say foisting of Chief Obasanjo on the nation in 1999. Historians agree that Nigeria has still not recovered from that historic blunder; for rather than get better, the national ethos has decayed considerably, and values have withered badly.
Worse, Gen Babangida continues to equivocate endlessly rather than simply apologise. First, he said the annulment was necessitated by his realisation that some key military officers were poised to pounce on Chief Abiola should he be sworn in. Better therefore to control the looming explosion rather than abandon the system to uncontrolled outcomes, he reasoned. Then, secondly, after much pressure and insults, Gen Babangida finally agreed that he bore full responsibility for the annulment, as if anyone, no matter how whimsically or tenuously, thought otherwise.
As for full and real apology, the general has refused till today to offer one. It is almost as if he does not realise that more than anything else, that annulment defined his government, and will define his place in history. How anyone can head to the grave with such a burden on his conscience is difficult to fathom.
But if Gen Babangida has been somewhat timorous in offering us an apology, Chief Obasanjo has been enthusiastic and even feisty in shirking responsibility for his sinister roles in perverting the course of Nigerian history and aggravating the comprehensive decay of the national ethos. As for apology, he will not even contemplate it.
Speaking truculently on the abduction of more than 200 Chibok schoolgirls and the spectacular clumsiness of the President Goodluck Jonathan in rescuing them, Chief Obasanjo denounced the president as slow in responding to an abduction he misjudged, and for being in more ways than one unfit for office. But while the former president is an expert in passing sweeping judgement on both his betters and inferiors, he never accepts responsibility for anything, and is determined, until his dying days, never to apologise for anything, no matter how obviously complicit he is in that thing.
In the Bloomberg TV interview in which he passed acidic comments on President Jonathan, Chief Obasanjo would not even agree that he foisted President Jonathan on us. Said he: “I always tell the President himself; if God doesn’t want you to be there, you won’t be there. On instrumentality of people, yes, because God wants him to be there. But having been there, you have to perform.
That is what I believe. When you get there, no matter how, just perform and keep on performing.”
It is clear that in the imperious and sanctimonious view of Chief Obasanjo, President Jonathan is a misfit in government. But what is in dispute is how and why the president got into office. As far as his theology goes, Chief Obasanjo sees himself as nothing more than a willing and available helping hand to put President Jonathan in office; indeed, a helpless instrument the indomitable God can use at will.
Put laconically, Chief Obasanjo blames God for giving us President Jonathan. The former president’s theology, as this column has always maintained, has not grown beyond the evocative story of Adam and Eve or the casuistries he and his bucolic friends propagated during his undistinguished time in office. It will be recalled that the Biblical Adam blamed God for giving him a wife that exposed his weakness and nurtured his disobedience. But neither the Bible of which Chief Obasanjo is so vagrantly enamoured, nor credible philosophers, ancient and modern, encourage such lax applications of moral rules.
By universal agreement, President Jonathan is judged a failure in office. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo shares the biggest part of the blame, for he knowingly sought out the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and President Jonathan to plant them in office after unscrupulously and painstakingly destroying all opposition within and without his party, the PDP. If Chief Obasanjo suffers from amnesia, we do not. We still feel the agonizing freshness of history.
NATION
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