Obasanjo Does Not Want To Relinquish Power

By

Jide Ayobolu

jideayobolu@yahoo.co.uk

Even after the third term agenda has been effectively shot down in the National Assembly, the initiator of the infamous political agenda, rtd General Olusegun Obasanjo, the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is not in any way prepared to relinquish power at all. He wants to hang on to power till he dies, so that, all his misdeeds, while in office will not be exposed. He had always pretended to be someone who is puritanical, who is clearly above board and always beyond reproach. But all these are mere façade meant to sheepishly hoodwink people. He also comes across as someone who is emotionally unstable and psychologically far removed from reality. It is as a result of this disorder that, he thinks he likes Nigeria more than any other person, he thinks he knows Nigeria more than any other person, he thinks he understands Nigeria more than any other person, he thinks he has contributed immensely to the overall growth and development of Nigeria more than any other person. He thinks he has the solutions to all the problems confronting the country more than any other person. It is because of this that, he is not amendable to correction, impervious to reason and fixated on obsolete ideas.   Again, it is not merely day dreaming but he is living in a fool’s paradise, an unmitigated illusion of his non-existent achievements, and a grand delusion of grandeur. It is in this regard that the former executive of Ogun State, Aremo Segun Osoba expressly explained that, “there is a plan on now and the third term plan is still very much alive and kicking, and this man (Obasanjo) I know, like I normally say, is not a man who gives up a fight even when he is struggling on the ground like the chicken- you know when you cut off the head of the chicken, there are some of them that get up, even after the head is cut off and starts running just anywhere. Plan A, which is third term, has been scuttled. But there are still plan B, C and D, the sequence I would not know”.

He then went on to explain in graphic details that, “one of the plans is still to go to court and say that elections took place early in 1999 and that there was no constitution in place then, so, that the election is not considered the first election. Therefore, the first election under the 1999 constitution, in their own thinking, is the 2003 elections. They still have a plan that will say that the president can still go for another election under the 1999 constitution and that is the game plan that they have. Another plan is the census. You see, a country like Nigeria should not hold census under intense tension. Niger-Delta is boiling, South-east is on fire, and MASSOB is mobilizing the Igbos to boycott the elections and are killing themselves in the heart of Igboland especially in Onitsha in Anambra State. If you go and announce census results in the midst of all these, it is a deliberate ploy. I don’t know why a government should go and put census at the tail end of its departure; that is another game plan. I have my reservations. The third plan is Bakassi, but I think after the third term thing failed, the Bakassi thing was not pursued the way they wanted it pursued to the point where they could have been some dangerous reactions that could lead to some international and internal conflicts. All these games are designed as a way of portraying the country as not being stable and that the only man who can stabilize things, is the man that is up there. But the one that should have been the main game was what they put up first and they didn’t expect that the third term game would end the way it ended and it has created greater credibility problem and it has made Nigerians to regain their voices”.

Again, it is imperative to underscore the fact that, plans are afoot to make the 2007 general elections inconclusive and put in place an Interim National Government (ING). All these point to the fact that president Obasanjo is not ready to voluntarily relinquish power yet. He wants  to stay on in power for as long as he is alive, he has so much enjoyed the perks and perquisites of offices that to stay out of power, will be like just merely existing. Again, Osoba reasoned that, “the problem with the president is that all the people who could look him in the face and call him by his first name are no more around him, some have pulled back. Those who can talk to him, who are not government contractors, have pulled back and those who are with him now, are the young hawks who call him Baba”. That is why Socrates said; he who does not know, and does not know that he does not know is a fool. Why would someone who has performed woefully in the management of the affairs a country for about seven years wants to elongate his term? To do what? If he has done well, people will be begging him to stay on, but the truth is that, everybody wants him to go, so that some other people with fresh ideas, new initiatives and good thinking, can inject their variegated experiences into governance to get Nigeria out of the present morass of poverty, economic mismanagement and cesspool of corruption. It is also instructive to observe the perspicacious position of Osoba, when he said, “I know Obasanjo well and until things get to a boiling point, he does not listen, that’s why I don’t go to him. The General I know will not listen until things get to strangulation point and that’s why I don’t go to him. He is not the kind of person that will listen under normal circumstances”. The incontrovertible fact is that today in the country Obasanjo is law unto him, not only does he disregard the court judgments, he has contempt for the judiciary as an institution, and have very scant regard for the people of Nigeria. He is not a democrat, he is still a military man that he is, he does not believe in the rule of law. The mentality he has is that of the command structure of the army. To him every thing is all about, obey-before-complain. To him, he is greater than Nigeria. That is why he has an over bloated and false image of himself. Or how will the president say that God is not a God of abandon project, to justify his tenure elongation agenda. He has forgotten that it was God that choose Saul, but while he was still on the throne God choose David and anointed him as king. The problem with Obasanjo is that he thinks he is invincible and omnipotent, but the gospel truth is that he is not God. He erroneously thinks he is the messiah that is why he suffered from messiah complex.

Much more importantly is the fact that, he has become a political liability to the Yoruba race. That is why, it has been said that, “The Yoruba people who have been exposed as the most competent people have been made to be mere people, we have over rated the ability of President Olusegun Obasanjo. He got there and has behaved like a person who lacks focus and extensive administrative capacity. We have lost that because he is Yoruba. Then credibility, Yoruba people have always been tagged the kind of people you want to do business with, but again with Obasanjo who has reneged on mere gentlemanly agreement…..Nigerians don’t believe that the Yoruba people can be trusted. We have lost so much and I don’t think forty years is so much for Nigerians to forgive us and forget what we have done which is what this man Obasanjo has brought upon us”. Yet, he has not done any tangible thing for the Yoruba race since 1999, talk less of the country. So, why does this type of character wants to stay put in government indefinitely?

At this juncture, it is very important to look closely at the well-thought out remarks of Chief Segun Osoba on President Obasanjo, he said inter alia, “Obasanjo was a child of accident and remains a man of accident, he is an accidental person and I’ll explain what I mean. Brigadier General Adekunle had already finished his job and Biafra was already being put in a very small place and people were already defecting to the Nigeria side in large number. By accident, Obasanjo became the one to whom the Biafrans handed over to in surrender. That was an accident because someone else had done the job. He became Chief of Staff, supreme headquarters, because they wanted a Yoruba man to be there as second in command to General Murtala Muhammed as Head of State. That was another accident in his life. By pure accident, pure accident, Dimka’s coup made him emerge as Head of State then and then also with the death of MKO Abiola, it gave Nigeria no other choice than to make a Yoruba person president in 1999. The mandate he’s using now is Abiola’s mandate. He has never used his own mandate. The mandate he used then was Murtala’s mandate while the mandate he’s using is pure Abiola’s mandate. Another accident. That is not all because, we really have to explore this very well. Another accident happened because America’s invasion of Iraq, a pure accident for Obasanjo, brought the prices of crude oil up; the prices have not been stable. What the president has collected as revenue is more than what the entire country had collected since independence. So it was pure accident that he had so much money that the Paris Club felt that if there was so much money than he should pay them and go. I’ll give that to him that he did well, but it was pure accident to him. The other accident is the GSM thing which had been in the pipeline during Abacha’s period. He is a child of pure accident”. So, what do Nigerians expect from an accidental president, if not accidental behaviours. This  not withstanding, all progressive forces, civil society organizations, human right groups, NGO’s, CDO’s, religious bodies, pressure and interests groups must all come together, join forces and get Obasanjo out of power in the overall interest of the Nigerian state and Nigerians.