Obasanjo In A Democratic Romance With Johnson-Sirleaf, Boos Weah

By

Nduka Uzuakpundu  

ozieni@yahoo.com

President Olusegun Obasanjo is boundlessly happy. And he has, characteristically, refused to unseal his well-chiselled lips, as if in a generous attempt at a presidential disclosure of the secret spring of it all. From all indications, he prefers – in consonance with his notorious habit – to keep the inquisitive amongst his closest political associates at Aso Rock – and the rest of the Nigerian public – guessing. For that, you might think – if you’re one of the numerous, keen observers of Obasanjo’s anti-corruption campaign – that the cause of his boundless happiness is not unconnected with the fall of the Alamieyeseighas and the Ladojas. But to the extent that the informed student of public administration and political power, ex-coup-plotter and guru of human psychology in Obasanjo have always known the character of some political juggernauts and the degree to which they could be tempted to breach the limits of decency, he’s not in the least surprised that his anti-corruption harvest, so far, is promising. And so that discounts, rather curiously, though, the anti-corruption success, as the fount of Obasanjo’s boundless bliss. But, for as long as Obasanjo stubbornly refuses to be gracious enough to tell the Nigerian tax-payers and voters why he’s unusually cheerful, for so long shall the mills of idle, if mischievous, rumour and speculation flower. One of such speculations might just be the emergence of Madam Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as the first, democratically-elected female president of Liberia; Africa’s first. Recall that Obasanjo was at the historical inauguration ceremony, on January 16, during which Johnson-Sirleaf thanked Obasanjo profoundly in appreciation of Nigeria’s brotherly assistance to the people of Liberia that had brought them out of the battlefield to the path of sanity, democracy, national reconciliation and reconstruction.

Being a witness to the dawn of a genuine multi-party and purposive democratic dawn in Liberia – as opposed to the discriminatory, grossly unrepresentative and abusive forms of government that the country had known for nearly three decades, following the Doe-led coup in1980 – gives Obasanjo an amply justifiable cause to be boundlessly happy. He speculates that the triumph of reason, which has found a brilliant expression in the internationally-approved democratic race, is yet another eloquent justification for one of the most daringly unique foreign policy initiatives ever taken by a South country – one that is quite comparable to Fidel Castro sending Cuban sons and daughters to die in the battlefield in Angola, so that Angolans themselves – under the leadership of the late Comrade Agostinho Neto – would live in peace and freedom. It is also Obasanjo’s exquisite calculation that the Liberian democratic renaissance is well in tune with Nigeria of his unprophesied, first coming – as a coup-plotter and an unwilling military dictator – which, in a criminal meddlesomeness, conspired with some imps, who styled themselves as liberation fighters – led by Africa’s oldest political party – the African National Congress – to dismantle the apartheid monster. Still, the boundless happiness that is the lot of Obasanjo could be explained by his perceived thinking that just as the democratic wind that he fanned quite actively in Zimbabwe was to spread like an angry wildfire, which later consumed Namibia and South Africa, so shall Liberia’s – and he makes a special effort to qualify it – “under the leadership of Madam President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf” – have a salutary, domino effect on the its neighbours, especially Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea-Conakry and the rest of the western half of the ECOWAS sub-region. With a relatively peaceful and democratic ECOWAS sub-region, Obasanjo calculates, quite correctly, that no longer would refugees be an albatross on the neck of the sub-region’s leaders, but also that the coast would be clear for Nigerian goods, services, capital and labour to move freely and settle wherever they desire. The speculation that is inspired by Obasanjo drawing an erudite linkage between the Liberian democracy and regional development economics might just be a cautious allusion to the gargantuan responsibilities that the newly-consolidated Nigerian banks would be expected to discharge – as in financing the sub-region’s gas pipeline and single currency projects. With Nigeria supplying most of the sub-region with oil and gas, Obasanjo says it would be mischievous to think that Abuja would want to ape the kind of international blackmail that Ptuin’s Russia is presently indulging itself in Ukraine and the rest of Eastern and Central Europe. That also implies that some Nigerian individuals and corporate bodies, that are well celebrated for their openness and transparency, would be given some gargantuan reconstruction contacts in Liberia. In the meantime, Obasanjo has denied speculations that he intended to sway Johnson-Sirleaf to give Temperance Farm the monopoly of supplying – between now and whenever he leaves office – such essential, agricultural commodities as eggs, grains, beef, pork, frozen poultry products and some endangered bush meat! He has also strenuously disclaimed the mischievous speculation that a certain popular street near the Robertsfield Airport, in Monrovia, would, in response to the Sierra Leoneans’ eponymous recognition of the late General Sani Abacha, be named after him – come Johnson-Sirleaf’s next birthday. An ostensibly impressed Obasanjo was caught in video camera recorder grinning and nodding his round skull simply because Johnson-Sirleaf vowed – with a touch of rugged determination – in her inaugural address, to engage corruption in an epic wrestling match.

The other day, somewhere near the Eagle Square, in Abuja, Obasanjo was visibly mad with a certain irresponsible journalist who put it to him, while he was jogging, that, if the Johnson-Sirleaf historical, democratic phenomenon was any guide, it presupposed that whenever he chose to leave office, Nigeria’s equivalent of Johnson-Sirleaf – in terms of international exposure and political experience – Finance Minister, aggressive Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala – who’s also a former labourer at the Bretton Woods institutions – would naturally step into his shoes.

Obasanjo was also quoted by one of his aides, who goes by the name Atiku (a.k.a Disloyalty), as calling the irresponsible journalist “an idiot.” Well, whatever Obasanjo feels about the irresponsible parallel drawn between Johnson-Sirleaf and aggressive Okonjo-Iweala, by the irresponsible and fake journalist, fact is that the 21st Century looks irreversibly divinely ordained as the year of former hired labourers in the vineyard of both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). And nobody, repeat, nobody – not even Obasanjo, in his capacity as the head of the African Union – can stop the impending female presidential revolution to that effect; a good reason why he must boo anyone who may feed him with such poisonous words that he should toss a gorgeously-attired Iyabo, whom he dragged to Johnson-Sirleaf’s inauguration, into the race. And let it be stated here – and now – that Obasanjo is being closely watched; any attempt he or any of his faceless agents makes to prevent our own equivalent of Johnson-Sirleaf from walking with a suave feline gait on her way to capturing state power at the Presidency, would draw not only a devastatingly bloody response – bloodier than the Liberian civil war – but also a reversal of the recent debt relief granted the country – thanks to aggressive Okonjo-Iweala’s impressive campaign – by her foreign creditors. Perhaps, of all the speculations as to the real cause of Obasanjo’s boundless happiness, none is as persuasive as this: Obasanjo – the notorious misogynist – thinks, with so much disinterest and beguiling shyness, that the significance of the emergence of Johnson-Sirleaf would only start registering come the next extraordinary summit of African heads of state and government, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when, in her gorgeous attire and pretty mien, she would be expected to break four decades of male monopoly and choking dullness at such an august continental affair. Obasanjo is eagerly looking forward to that occasion to admire Her Imperial Majesty from very comfortably close quarters. Until Johnson-Sirleaf was finally declared the winner of the Liberian presidential election, it was a sulky Obasanjo, who stubbornly refused to conduct himself as a loving father and a well-given African statesman – whose name rings a familiar bell in the world’s most influential capitals. That was when Obasanjo never hid his violent distaste for the former footballer of the year, George Oppong Weah – the presidential candidate of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) – in his unique and historical enterprise to govern his war-ravaged country. When Obasanjo’s senile and garrulous peers in the African Union – the Bongos, Bozizes, Kufours, Mubaraks, Mugabes, Nguessos, Wades et al – were busy sending congratulatory messages to Weah – on his comfortable lead during the first round of the Liberian presidential polls – Obasanjo was the only one who was swooning and cursing, wondering why Liberians should have voted so generously for Weah, whom he called a political neophyte. His pettiness was later extended to the point of perturbation just because the ex-AC Milan star shared the same first name with United States President George Walker Bush.

Although he has tried, in vain, to deny his unprovoked meanness towards Weah, Obasanjo was equally boundlessly unhappy, because – by sharing a first name with the American leader – Weah, as president of Liberia, would have had the unspoken privilege to refer to the tenant at the White House simply as “George”, without the prefix “Your Excellency” – a privilege which had never been extended to Obasanjo – as though in a benign disdain for his refulgent credentials as one of Africa’s topmost democrats – and the best campaigner against corruption – whichever way you define it – ever produced by the South. Worse still, Obasanjo was quoted by some of his aides, who claim unqualified loyalty to him, as plotting to mount a global campaign against “that rascally, small boy called George”, so that international investors would not take their money to Liberia, for as long as Weah remained in power, because – and this was taken from the first paragraph of Obasanjo’s “19-point strategy against . . . ” the ex-soccer guru – “any foreign capital that is invested in an economy built ‘Oppong’ the weird foundation of a war-worn whims of a man, who is hopelessly tipsy for his immoderate quaffing of Chelsea gin, will be a stupendous waste.” Such was the destructive depth of Obasanjo’s envy. He had feared that a Weah presidency might signal economic discombobulation for the West African coast; in what would translate to a pollution of the political space: the youths in the sub-region – some of whom are worse than our “area boys” – may, as if taking a cue from Weah – abandon formal education and every other profitable trade – including farming, in preference for football. Then, in Obasanjo’s words, “the political economy of the entire West Africa sub-region will collapse.” The danger that Obasanjo rightly saw, in that event, was the irresistible temptation that would have faced all the15 member-countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to go aborrowing new economic ideas and resources from the World Bank and IMF. Obasanjo had argued that the weirdness of the so-called Weah phenomenon in the politics of the ECOWAS sub-region did not lie so much in making Liberia the only country within the sub-region that was pretending to have the notoriously rigid monopoly in turning out rascally, small boys as president.

Remember Master-Sergeant Doe, who was only 28, back in 1980, when, in a sickening aping of the Obasanjo phenomenon, led a gang of rascals in the Liberian army to toppled the Tolbert administration. But, each time that aspect of Liberian politics was broached of, in a heated debate with Obasanjo, you’ll almost marvel at the manner he springs to his muscular limbs, like a popular football star, to make the point that, while it was true that he was a member of a long-disbanded gang of coup-plotters, the coup to which he was a party was transparently bloodless. “The one led by Doe – the first ever in that country – in case you have forgotten that aspect of the political history of Liberia – was extremely sanguinary. Doe and his team of rascals were blood-thirsty. Whatever anyone thinks about the impending Weah presidency, my position is that it will be difficult for me, under any circumstance – be it at ECOWAS or African Union meeting – to start my address with: ‘Your Excellencies’ and imagine that the same rascally, small boy, who calls himself ‘George’ is somewhere amongst the audience – even if as a democratically-elected president – feeling so respected by me. I think that will be abominably un-African. He’s too junior to me. In fact, I am old enough to be his father. What’s politics and this fad called democracy trying to make of African culture, which reveres grey hair. I think that we need to fine-tune politics in the continent such that it does not make nonsense of our culture. I have been thinking of how this ugly possibility can be avoided since that rascally, small boy in Togo, who calls himself Faure, refused to let my executive jet land in Lome.” “And you can see that element of disrespect in the manner the Liberian youths are voting for that footballer. Are they all misogynists in that country that they cannot vote, en masse, for that woman politician – I mean Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf? I think they should even try to emulate the Germans, who have made history by voting for the candidate of the Christian Democratic Union – I mean Ms Angela Merkel.

I’m in love with her transparently feminine courage. I don’t see anything wrong in German male parliamentarians – and other politicians – or any world leader or statesman, and that includes my humble self – addressing her as either ‘Madam Chancellor’, or ‘Your Excellency’. I have seen some her pictures and one may say that she’s just as good-looking as Johnson-Sirleaf. I dare say that she’ll make a good head of the German government. So, to that extent, my honest, fatherly and statesman-like advise is that Liberians should retrace their steps before it’s too late. They need the experience and prestige – the kind that only Johnson-Sirleaf, a former staff of the World Bank can bring to their war-ravaged country.” It was widely rumoured that Obasanjo thinly-veiled opposition to Weah’s candidacy was predicated on the fear that a Weah presidency would steel the fact the days of old men in African politics were numbered – and that includes a certain old man, who’s not only very good at tilling the earth, but also has stubbornly refuse to claim that he’s morally opposed to seeking a constitutional third term in office.

Obasanjo knew then that the weird Weah phenomenon was just a tip, under which there was an iceberg: a smouldering, monstrous revolution that would have, come 2007, consumed the whole of the ECOWAS sub-region. Obasanjo had sworn that such a revolution, or a democratic wild wind, called “Hurricane Weah”, was better stopped in its tracks before it inflicted havoc on anyone. The weird Weah phenomenon, which Obasanjo has craftily asphyxiated would have reshaped the structure of 21st Century West African politics this way: Just kick the leather sphere the manner Weah would naturally do, and there you are – a president.

Obasanjo’s fear of the weird Weah phenomenon became perilously intense soon after he realised the linkage between it and the presidency of 40 year-old Pierre Nkurunziza in Rwanda – who had agreed, in spite of Obasanjo’s self-serving, entreaty, to head its Great Lakes chapter.

  *Nduka Uzuakpundu is a Lagos-based journalist.