Former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s very poor record in identifying leaders is now a source of concern that his championed third force Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM) may yet disappoint Nigerians by foisting a below par leadership on the country in 2019 if historical antecedents are anything to go by.
This comes as the former president yesterday registered as one of the members of CNM championed by two former Nigeria governors, Olagunsoye Oyinlola of Osun state and Donald Duke of Cross River state, at the NUJ Press Centre, Iwe-Irohin House in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital
Although the former President did a lot, especially during his second term in office between 2003 and 2007, to position Nigeria for growth and development and also built a highly mobile and ambitious middle class and bureaucratic elite, his penchant for sponsoring and supporting weak and sub optimal candidates for the position of president of the country since then has slowed the gains made during that period.
“I am not quite sure Obasanjo’s “coalition” is not another hegemonic alternative being assembled by the generals! I agree we need a national progressive coalition, but I want one rooted in civil society, committed intellectuals, labour, women, youths, the professions and the diaspora. We can work with the generals, but not for them,” Opeyemi Abaje, political economist and CEO of RTC Advisory Services wrote in an article in BusinessDay recently.
Obasanjo – the dean of the retired generals – had had the most influence in determining those who governed Nigeria in a democratic setting since 1979. Curiously, he turns to lead opposition forces against those same leaders he supported the moment the wave of public opinion shifts against them and he denies responsibility or refuses to accept any fault in helping foist them on the country.
If his support for and role in resolving the twelve-two-thirds riddle in favour of Shehu Shagari in 1979 was not so obvious, his role in the emergence and election of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan in 2007 and 2011 respectively could not be overstated. He was equally a co-sponsor or as Bola Tinubu describes him, the ‘navigator’ of the Buhari candidacy in 2015 in what Obasanjo later describes as “anything but Jonathan” movement.
The world watched with surprise in 2007 when out of the many competent, energetic and urbane candidates for the office of the president, Obasanjo singlehandedly drafted a terminally ill and unwilling Yar’adua to contest for the presidency even when it was so obvious that Yar’adua was medically unfit to run for the office. Even as governor of Katsina state, Yar’adua was hardly around in his country, frequenting Germany for treatment.
It even showed during the campaigns when he was evacuated to Germany for treatment and Obasanjo had to take over the campaign himself. The outcome of Obasanjo’s choice was that the country was almost torn apart by the crisis of the ill health of Yar’adua. But he still refused to accept any responsibility for his choice arguing that Yar’adua presented him a medical report which certified that he was healthy and fit to run for president.
It was a similar situation with Goodluck Jonatha’s emergence as Yar’adua’s deputy and later acting president, president, and elected president? All bore Obasanjo’s imprimatur. But while accepting the praises for these, he equally failed to accept blame for choosing someone many defined as ‘weak’ to govern a complex country like Nigeria.
While many believed Obasanjo particularly foisted weak persons on Nigeria as presidents as a form of revenge for the defeat of his third term agenda, those close to him, like his minister of the FCT, Nasir el Rufai, say it is for another purpose entirely: that he hoped to continue to govern from Oke Mosan in Abeokuta. “He thought they were weak people he could control and through whom he could continue to exercise power. I think that he thought Yar’adua would be an acceptable president, would be weak and subservient to him in many policy areas and would be consulting him regularly so that Obasanjo might be a Lee Kuan Yew,” El Rufai contended in his controversial book, the Accidental Public Servant. (Page 355)
Well, if that was his plans, they failed as Yar’adua moved against him almost immediately, reversing virtually most of the reforms he initiated including the sale of the refineries to Bluestar consortium. Even the ‘malleable’ Jonathan, in the later part of his presidency, defied Obasanjo leading to the Obasanjo’s explosive letter of rejection that set in motion the grand opposition against Jonathan which led to his defeat at the polls in 2015.
It is therefore surprising when Obasanjo, who earlier aptly described Buhari in his memoires, My Watch, as not sound on matters of the economy, admitted in his letter to the President that he supported him in 2014 because he thought Buhari would appoint qualified Nigerians to help out in other areas especially the economy. Well, it never happened and Obasanjo has again come to the conclusion that Buhari is not capable of solving the country’s problems.
In reality, sources hint to BusinessDay that the decision not to support Buhari for a second term had been taken since last year during the long medical vacation of president Buhari in London by the retired Generals and kingmakers who have been considering names of younger Nigerians to mount the horse in 2019. At that time, a confrontation was deemed unnecessary because of the president’s health conditions that would naturally disqualify him.
However, President Buhari returned in much improved health, and following signs that he was preparing to declare his candidacy for the 2019, Obasanjo was left with no option than to release the letter criticising Buhari’s administration for its ineptitude and clannishness and urging the president to honourable “dismount from the horse to join the league of the country’s former leaders whose “experience, influence, wisdom and outreach can be deployed on the sideline for the good of the country.”
In the letter, Obasanjo also suggested the formation of the movement to salvage Nigeria having judged the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of being incapable of repositioning Nigeria.
Opposition voices however, continue to express doubt that if Obasanjo had repeatedly failed to install good leaders on Nigeria in the past, trusting him to champion the emergence of a credible leader in 2019 will be a costly mistake by Nigerians. The enfant terrible of Ekiti state, Governor Ayo Fayose described Obasanjo’s letter to Buhari as “face-saving”. According to him, ‘Obasanjo is not the right person to write that letter. He was the leader of those who deceived Nigerians and lied to the international community to support Buhari. Obasanjo should heed his own advice to Buhari by also going home to rest. Both Obasanjo and Buhari are analogue in this digital age and have expired,” Fayose said.
Barely two weeks after the release of the letter, the Coalition for Nigeria Movement CNM), parading mostly former governors and staunch loyalists of Obasanjo, was launched at the Shehu Yar’adua Centre in Abuja. Speaking at the launch, a former governor of Ondo state, Olagunsoye Oyinlola said the “movement was not launched to legitimise OBJ’s legacies”, but coincided with the former president’s letter, which raised critical issues that must be tackled. He said himself and other notable Nigerians felt “the time has come that the youths should take the lead while the elders only provide guidance.”
Meanwhile, Obasanjo, who was not at the launch of the movement in Abuja, yesterday formally registered as a member of the movement. Obasanjo completed the membership form of the movement and handed it over to Oyinlola, the national coordinator of the movement, at the NUJ secretariat, Abeokuta.
It will be recalled that Obasanjo used similar method to mobilise and campaign against former President Goodluck Jonathan and then ruling party – People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in 2014 when he employed the service of his ward Chairman who brought in party members from ward 11, Owu Abeokuta North, to tear Obasanjo’s PDP membership card.
While speaking in presence of Oyinlola, Duke as well as Modupe Adelaja, former Minister of State for Defence; Ekundayo Opaleye, former Military Administrator of old Ondo state; Taofeek Arapaja, former Deputy Governor of Oyo state; Gboyega Isiaka, two-term governorship candidate in Ogun state, among others, Obasanjo-Bello said, “If the instruments we have used so far in our nation building and governance since independence have not served us well, it is imperative that we should rethink and retool.
“It was Einstein who stated that it would amount to height of folly for anybody or any group to continue to do things in the same way and expect different results. Coalition for Nigeria Movement is proposed as the new direction to mobilise our population for unity, co-operation, development, rule of law, employment, law and order, justice, integration, peace, security, stability, welfare and well-being.
“In these regards, special attention and space must be given to youths and women, who in most cases, have been victims and underlings. Youths and women must be carried along right from the first go, they must be carried along and have a place of honour and responsibility, they must be part and parcel of governance in this country.
“If what we have tried in the past has not taken us to the promise land, we have to try something else and something else is this grassroots popular movement built from the bottom to lead us, I hope and pray, to the promise land.
“So, the issue of youth and women are taken together and I do believe and hope, and that is what my own responsibility would be, working with others to give guidance, direction and advice that right from the word go, the youths and women must be given a pride of place and honour in this movement.”
Speaking on why he greeted President Buhari at African Union Summit held at weekend in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Obasanjo noted that he could not single out Buhari unacknowledged, having greeted all other present and past leaders of the Continent, saying the action was borne out of respect as a well brought up Yoruba-born Nigerian.
He said, “I wonder why some Nigerians were worried why I had to pay respect to the Nigerian President, that’s my own upbringing as a well born and bred Yoruba boy. That doesn’t mean that what I have said about the President, which I did not say out of bitterness and hatred, is evidence that the President has performed. In some areas, good enough, in other areas not good, and proper advice which he may take and he may not take.”
Chris Akor & Razaq Ayinla
