Has President Obasanjo a Third-Term Mission from God?

By

Abdulsalam Olatubosun Ajetunmobi

Abdsalm@aol.com

 

 

It appears that President Obasanjo’s third-term bid in the presidency is withdrawing from imaginary worlds into reality. In what seems like an echo rather than the voice of US President George W. Bush who once claimed that he decided to invade Iraq because he was on a “mission form God,” the deputy National Chairman of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George in a newspaper interview declared last week that “One thing the president (Obasanjo) fears is the punishment that may befall him if he fails to follow the wish of the almighty God in playing his role to revamp the country."

 

For some time now, straight, loud voices with references to God have been ringing to alert the citizens of the dire consequence if the President does not elongate his stay beyond 2007. However, I think it would have been wiser for third-term bid agitators to avoid playing up their private religious faith in public. If the President has a mission from Christian God to stay beyond 2007 elections, does Allah which Muslims worship or the deities of other tribal religions sanction his third-term calling? How far can individuals personal religious faith be transformed into changing the legislation for running for an office for a third time in a row?

 

Nigeria is a conglomeration of peoples with different faiths. Theological explanations of God in these faiths differ from one another. Each of these faiths is heretical from the standpoints of all the others. For instance, the great affirmation of the uniqueness of God in Islam is what has always caused Muslims to look with suspicion at Christian doctrines of God. Christian belief about God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit appears at once to compromise the belief that God has no other being associated with him. Some however like to believe that primitive tribal religions are much nicer perhaps for their forgiveness, humility and compassion in the face of unrelenting opposition from outside.

 

On top of the above, many other issues can get involved. For instance, if a Christian leader, as of today President Obasanjo has a right to dictate his personal religious faith to the nation changing the Constitution in order to run beyond the stipulated term, then, by the same reasoning and the same logic, every other person in other religions will have exactly the same right in future, to have his/her desire to run for office as much as he or she likes by underpinning such action based on whatever faith being professed.

 

This may sound bizarre, but suggesting that the President has a personal calling from God to continue in office after 2007 elections smacks of using God as a get-out for total strategic failure of intellectual discourse among those making noise out of all proportion to their size, using monetary wealth as an inducement in a manner which is deleterious to the unity of the country.

  

To leave political decisions to those who deceptively induce the feeling of an unseen presence is to accept the spread of a theocratic culture which logic and experience prove cannot possibly support a culture of facts, actuality, tolerance and acceptance of the right of others to differ, nor accept the notion of unity through diversity. Most religions usually claim to be offering absolute truths, and this often leads certain believers to do such desperate things in support of their respective faiths. Of course, religious experience can be an encounter with God, not just a product of the brain; strong beliefs of any kind may also have their positive effects but that does not justify holding them if they have very bad side-effects. One side effect is to use God to perpetuate oneself in office.

 

There is no doubt that policy decisions may work best when underpinned with an ethical framework. But if the country's political matters are solely guided by personal religious faith to the echo of the President's associates, there is a danger that the entire country may in future become a nation of not only political conflict but also of a religious conflict, whereby actions guided by individuals private religious faith will always be attributed to God, yet they will contradict each other diametrically. That is, God speaking one thing to one leader and another thing to a different leader, and telling each leader to prolong his stay in office for the fear of the “punishment that may befall him.”

 

Many religious sects cast a spell - cultural, even political, as well as theological - over their adherents. Such spells must be broken. Nigeria is a multi-religious state and, in the running of government and legislation, whether at Federal or State levels, I believe that every citizen, whatever be his/her religion, tribe or ethnicity must acquire the basic fundamental civic rights. And the most important among these rights is the chance at least, to participate in the running of the government; a fact attested to by no less a person than the President himself this week while receiving the Annual Reports of the Federal Character Commission at the State House, Abuja.

 

Indeed, President Obasanjo attested to the right of every citizen to lead the country saying that "There is no where in this country where you cannot get good materials" for any political post stressing that what is important "is to look deep enough for the good ones who often don't put themselves forward".

 

Every country has its own climate and not all the flora can flourish in that climate. Dates for instance flourish in deserts but not in the chilly north. Similarly, cherries cannot be sown in the desert; they require a special climate. Sobriety, pledge, commitment and law-abidingness in leadership require a special climate. If we don't create that climate in the space of time, then they cannot be imposed. A nation's history does count a great deal in determining its future. President Obasanjo must leave in 2007 for other people to nurture the special climate already being created by him.

 

Yours faithfully,

Abdulsalam Olatubosun Ajetunmobi

London, United Kingdom