Alex Ekwueme, Mohammed Buhari and the others. It was also a machination that projected Obasanjo’s weakness as a sure point of departure for power change four years from 1999. The bitter truth of the matter is what we are now experiencing. Obasanjo has proven to be tougher than imagined and more lethal than expected. Perhaps from benefit of hindsight or sheer bravado of expedience, Obasanjo has refused to play the “good boy” who voluntarily handed over power in 1999 only for the commanding heights of the economy and the superstructures of state to be plundered by the political class that tool over owing largely to a weak leadership. If the truth must be told, I can say with some degree of certainty that when Obasanjo was taking power in 1999, he never envisaged tenure beyond eight years. He must have reasoned that in eight years, he will make a remarkable input and leave the podium. Unfortunately the realities that has steered him in the face has completely overwhelmed his perception of the state of affairs. It was in the spirit of this quick fix mentality that his government promised to turn NEPA around in six months. Seven years on, the situation has even deteriorated. The reality is not because his government has not tried to remedy things, but that this government has taken on a more fundamental transformation of the political economy of Nigeria far beyond the initial vision of Obasanjo in 1999. This reality beyond vision that Obasanjo is suffering today is also a consequence of his unpreparedness for leadership of this great nation in 1999. If he had considered political leadership then, perhaps he would have designed more focused and time based programme framework that will guide his eight years tenure after which he bows out.

Where do you now posit this quagmire? On Obasanjo or those that foisted him on Nigeria? If we must emphasis the truth, then we should acknowledge the fact that it has been a most painful seven years in Nigeria. Things are no longer at easy; though they have certainly not fallen apart. Far from it.

We are collectively paying the price of close to 30 years of celebrated misrule. We are being subjected to a season of deprivation; a consequence of brazen plunders by a wicked genre of leadership driven by crass turbulent materialistic tendencies. We are paying a bitter price of an inept generation of treasury looters and resource plunderers who diverted public wealth to personal estates, building individual fifty rooms, hundred rooms and aesthetics palaces on hill tops, valleys and ocean fronts. A past leadership that have awe inspiring personal castles all over Europe and the Americans, utterly self centered and egoistic. Unfortunately we cannot expect any fundamental transformation of this society by any radical forces.The exigencies of primordial considerations, clothed in mundane garments of tribal and religious differences ,wiped up by the same thieving elite when is their interest is undermined, has put a total revolution in check in NIGERIA.

The only form of change that can take place is this country is this reform agenda of this government. It is has a revolutionary zeal about it .It is the only change that the system will permit.It is being resisted because it is an attempt to completely overhaul ,uproot upturn and demolish an entrenched and sublime way of doing things wrongly. If the truth must be told, then, we must highlight the realities that steered us on the face prior to 1999. Aside of the political logjam, everything was in disarray. We were steadily but surely heading for ultimate crash. The state machinery was high-jacked by a clique and public treasury was wretched. There was a facade of normality but the reality was that all forms of socio-economic infrastructures were in comatose. We need not bore ourselves with the experience of sleeping at petrol stations, non-existent medical and academic infrastructure, total hopeless and decent to abyss We must thank God who brought us back from the days of darkness and absolute hopelessness to this trying times with some form hope of a better tomorrow.

. If we must be generous with the truth, then we must say that the man Obasanjo has done some things well. As is usually the case, his is a bourgeoisie reformation; the only kind that can take place in our country. This kind of reform is as a result of internal contradiction within the ruling class and Obasanjo happens to be the leader and not the visioner, for the change is an internal reaction. It is born out of the objective realities on the ground and the only option left for Obasanjo is either to actualize it or get destroyed by its numerous contradictions.

In this reformation, like any other, some people most pay the price for a better tomorrow and that is what some of us are painfully doing today. Though we were not a party to the discretion of the instruments of state, we are now the sacrificial lambs who must sacrifice to reform it.

In implementing these reform ideas forced on him, Obasanjo, by circumstance, not a few feathers will be ruffled . Democracy as the West and American will want us to practice it, may not provide a strong enough framework to force down the bitter pills of change as we are seeing it today.

This explains the benevolent despot that Obasanjo has become in his attempt to do what history his inevitably forced him to do. As pointed out earlier on, Obasanjo never had the slightest idea of doing what circumstances has compelled him to do today. . This explains the clear painlessness manifested at the beginning of his administration, until it suddenly dawned on him that he has a date with history.

The third term script is a hunger deep-rooted in the psychic of a man desirous of doing what must be done. It is a motive force not engineered by selfish desires or self seeking propagation of any individual ego. It is a force beyond individual explanation. It is an obsession. Obasanjo is being propelled by selfless drive as determined by circumstances beyond him.

How then do we explain this drive? Ironically, it is a product of internal class contradiction and a manifestation of rudeness elite conspiracy. If P.D.P as a political party had a vision and a properly articulated party manifesto, then the emerging scenario where like the proverbial fat , (P.D.P) is generating the juice with which it is being dismembered would not have happened. If P.D.P is a political party formed on the basis of common goal through common means for the benefit of this polity, then the opposition to the third term would not come from within the party itself. Had P.D.P not being an amalgam of self seeking, power hungry individuals; then the common goal of seeing their re -structuring of the polity to maturity would have been enough force to hold them together.

P.D.P. is by no means a political party, consequently, the self destruct tendency of this contraception should not be allowed to disrupt our fledging democratic experience.

What is emerging is self interest above the corporate existence of Nigeria. When we look at the possible alternatives to Obasanjo as the President, it leaves must to be desired. I will rather endure a further Obasanjo government than to allow the enthronement of any of the emerging alternatives. If it is not self interest and seeking power for self aggrandizement , what alternatives are these advocates of democratic excellence have to offer to the Nigerian people? Let us amend our constitution and give Obasanjo another four years to complete this labour of history.

I perceive a situation where the present restructuring of the polity as being carried out by Obasanjo will completely transform the contest for power in Nigeria.

Moreover, the young should see this as their last opportunity to consign the over re-cycled leaders to the dustbin of history. A new leadership in 2007 will definitely re-cycle a the same class of tired visionless leaders, but if Obasanjo takes it to 2011, 85% of them would have either retired voluntarily, forced to rest by nature or forgotten by a new crop of leaders that will emerge post 2011.

Let us allow this generation of leaders to go with Obasanjo in 2011 by supporting the constitutional amendment for tenure elongation. It may not be popular, but what are the options?.

Less I forget, whose turn is it to produce the next president the people of the south south, southeast or back to the north? Maybe be this debate will take us to 2011, but for now let the reform run its full course.