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Obasanjo’s Legacies By Ahmed Badamosi
I began to think about the legacies for which Chief Olusegun Obasanjo would be remembered when he eventually leaves office soon after reading Kunle Sowunmi’s article on this website titled “Double Standard is Obasanjo’s Legacy”. I ruminated on the various aspects, which a peoples’ government is supposed to have tackled and I began to wonder if we have had a government in our country since 1999.
On education, it is clear that the present situation in our tertiary institutions of learning is worse off than before the inception of this administration. Some university lecturers in the University of Ilorin who protested over poor working conditions had their appointments terminated. The list included medical professors.
Social amenities have not been provided. Our roads have become death traps claiming lives on daily basis in spite of the sum of 300 billion Naira allocated to the former Minister for Works Chief Annenih for construction of new roads and repairs of the existing ones. Electricity supply has deteriorated. So much money has been pumped into NEPA to no avail.
We are living in times where people join politics for personal aggrandizement first while benefit of others if at all thought of comes second. We know people come to power through the auspices of political parties and the head of a political party is the Chairman. In a way the local government chairmen, State Governors, the President and others are ordinary members of the party. Anyone of them could be sanctioned by the chairman for erring. For Chief Obasanjo it is the other way round. He never fails to fire any of his party Chairmen who fail to do his bidding. A case in point is Chief Barnabas Gemade and Chief Solomon Lar before him and recently Chief Audu Ogbe.
The constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has spelt out the functions of each of the three tiers of government. To my understanding the Judiciary is the final arbiter whenever there is any controversy. In spite of this Chief Obasanjo chooses to obey some court rulings and disobey others and still claims he is practicing democracy. I wonder what type of democracy that is. The Supreme Court ruled that Lagos State should be given the money due to it for its local government councils. Our recalcitrant Chief Obasanjo has refused to obey. Only God knows how the employees of those local government councils are surviving.
There has never been a time when disunity among Nigerians has become rife than during this administration. Initially it was by the Chief’s divide and rule policy. It was accentuated by his establishment of the National Political Reforms Conference (NPRC). The conference initially pitched Muslims against Christians as regards the number of members of each of the religions in attendance and lately the South-South region against the northerners over the issue of resource control.
Sometimes in 1996 a senior colleague of mine in Ibadan came to office looking sad. I asked him what was amiss and he asked me if I had listened to the late General Abacha’s nationwide broadcast. When I told him I hadn’t he told me he was not happy with the late Head of State for commuting Chief Obasanjo’s sentence to jail term for the alleged coup plot. I demanded for reasons and he told me the Chief said the late Chief MKO Abiola was not the messiah our country needed. That was the reason why he sold the idea of Interim National Government to General Babangida and started scheming to be made to head it. If that is true it is therefore safe to conclude that the Chief was neck deep in the rigging that marred the April 2003 Presidential elections.
The economy took a downward turn in spite of hiring a brain from the World Bank yet the magnitude of human suffering now has never been witnessed in the history of this country. Some contractor friends of the President like Alhaji Dangote have monopolized trade in essential commodities such as sugar, rice etc making life almost unbearable for the common man. Even the Nigerians living in diaspora know this because they know the purchasing power of the dollar equivalent of the money they used to send in the past ie before 1999 and the what such money can buy now. Another reason for the inflation in the country is that at the inception of this government I witnessed something amazing. Some people were given free money in the name of poverty alleviation. The next is the corruption. The level of corruption at all levels of government officials and politicians is unprecedented in the history of this country. Yet Chief Obasanjo is said to be fighting it. They are competing to show off their affluence from ill-gotten money in this Obasanjo’s government. This has attracted the jobless who have no means of livelihood into robbery among the populace thereby endangering everyone including those who barely manage to survive. If it was possible to inform the late General Murtala Mohammed about the corruption in the country now I believe he will doubt that it is happening during the tenure of his Chief of Staff Supreme Headquatres. If eventually he realizes that it is indeed Obasanjo’s government the corruption is happening he will probably convulse and lie back in his grave.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that this President would be remembered in the negative side of history. This is unlike leaders like Patrice Lumumba who once said “I have no right to sleep unless my people have become masters of their own destiny. I am the Congo, the Congo has made me and I am making the Congo”. At best our Chief might only be remembered for his own saying “I dey kampe”.
Ahmed Badamosi 22nd June 2005.
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