PERSPECTIVE

Ibrahim Ayagi As Garkuwan Obasanjo

Mohammed Haruna

Until early this month, I used to think my friend Idang Alibi (sorry Idang, it is not my intention to pick on you) was a strong contender, if not the favourite, for the title of Garkuwan Obasanjo. The Garkuwa, for those who do not understand Hausa, literally means shield. In the North it is a metaphor for bravery in defending a cause, a community or an office.

Idang, I wrote elsewhere last month, must be one of President Obasanjo’s greatest fans from the way he had often vigorously defended the president in his Thursday column in the Daily Trust. In my article, I tried to show that Idang overdid even himself as one of Obasanjo’s shields, when he tried to defend the president’s dubious strategy and zeal in implementing the National Identity Card Project.

Idang may still be a strong contender for the title of Garkuwan Obasanjo, but after reading Dr. Ibrahim Ayagi’s widely publicized general defence of Obasanjo early this month, it should obvious to even Idang that he has, at least for now, lost out to our outspoken economist for the title. For obsequiousness, Ayagi’s article, which was apparently meant to be a savage counter-offensive against the Arewa Consultative Forum for its persistent criticism of Obasanjo, is truly the article to beat. Idang, please move over.

Ayagi’s articles obsequiousness obviously renders it useless both as a shield for Obasanjo and as a counter-offensive against the ACF, but then isn’t it a paradox of power that leaders often, if not always, prefer praise-singing to truth, which is their only shield against failure (if you pardon the mixed metaphor)?

Obasanjo, says Ayagi, is “an extremely fair, balanced, honest, transparent and objective leader”. As military Head of State back in 1979, says Ayagi, Obasanjo “conducted the best, the fairest and the most transparent election in Nigeria”. Not done yet with heaping superlatives on the president, Ayagi goes on to assert that “it is not easy today to get a finer, more honest, transparent and dedicated Nigerian than President Obasanjo. There is only one living Nigerian with attributes that can stand the test of probity and the high principles of President Obasanjo. In fact, this writer had long ago before 1998 (and still has) the belief that only two (2) living Nigerians could be trusted to lead Nigeria and manage the Nigerian economy honestly and efficiently”. These two, Ayagi says, are Obasanjo and former Head of State, General Muhammdu Buhari.

The promiscuous use of superlatives to describe anyone should ordinarily be a cause for embarrassment. When the object of these superlatives is someone with a record like Obasanjo’s in the last three years, a record which even he himself is defensive about, as we shall see presently, such superlatives are doubly embarrassing. And when the praise-singer happens to be a social scientist with a Phd. to boot, like Ayagi, the embarrassment simply has no measure.

As Ayagi knows very well as a social scientist, social science does not admit absolutes. Not even the more certain pure sciences do. And even when a social scientist qualifies his theory as he must, he has, in addition, to bring forth undisputable facts to support it. Ayagi’s theory on Obasanjo is that he is extremely fair, balanced, honest, transparent and objective. He says no one can accuse Obasanjo of bias against the North because once-upon a time, he handed over power to a Northerner – Alhaji Shehu Shagari – even though the election was only “marginally favourable” to the Northerner. Finally, he says only Obasanjo and Buhari can be trusted to handle Nigeria’s economy “honestly and efficiently”.

Ayagi is not just an ordinary social scientist, but, it must be emphasized, one with a Phd. Yet he completely ignores the scientific vigor necessary to validate all the superlatives he has heaped on Obasanjo. Presumably, he wants us to simply accept his say-so, because he is, well, Ayagi. But as he knows very well, the problem with absolutes is that it takes one, and only one exception, to invalidate them. But in the case of Ayagi’s theory about Obasanjo, it is not just a matter of one exception flying against his absolutist theory, it is also a matter of public opinion and logic.

In terms of logic it is only fair to ask Ayagi if he truly believes it is fair, balanced, honest, transparent and objective for the president of a country to ignore the ruling of the Supreme Court of his country to free an accused, as is the case with Mohammed Abacha, presumably because the accused is the son of someone who was the president’s tormentor, once upon a time. Anyone, with the possible exception of Ayagi, would see this as a case of sheer vindictiveness. Still on logic, is it not a contradiction in terms for Ayagi to claim that Obasanjo conducted “the best, the fairest and the most transparent election in Nigeria”, and yet Obasanjo would decide who won the election merely on the basis of his own subjective opinion? Isn’t this what it means for Ayagi to say Obasanjo handed over handed over power to Shagari, not because the polls said he should, and not because the courts also said he should following Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s legal challenge of the results, but simply because Obasanjo “believed the Northerner won the elections”?

And then when Ayagi asserts that only two Nigerians can be trusted to handle the country’s economy “honestly and efficiently”, did it occur to him that these two Nigerians – Obasanjo and Buhari – have mutually antagonistic opinions of each other and, more importantly, the two of them believe in contradictory strategies for stopping the country’s rot and turning it around? If they are the only two leaders who can rescue Nigerians, should they not be a mirror-image of each other?

Again, since Ayagi believes only Obasanjo and Buhari can rescue Nigeria from its present rot, what are we to make of his subsequent claim in the article in his attempt at defending Obasanjo from the charge of marginalizing the North, that Obasanjo’s government is inclusive of Northerners who “are honourable, knowledgeable and principled people who have already made their mark in life and are not in government for anything other than to serve the Nigerian nation”? Such Northerners as “Vice-President Atiku Abubakar who works very closely with the president… (and) people like Mallam Adamu Ciroma (Galadiman Fika), Aminu Wali, Dr. Rilwanu Lukman, Sule Lamido, and even this humble writer, to mention just a few”. If all these gentlemen, of course Ayagi himself included, are “honourable, knowledgeable and principled” and are also self-less servants of the public, how come it is only Obasanjo and Buhari that can rescue Nigeria?

To leave the subject of Ayagi’s illogicality and return to the matter of public opinion, surely if he lived in Nigeria in the last three years he should know that his opinion of Obasanjo as the best thing that has happened and can happen to Nigeria is not just subjective, it is in the minority. How do I know the in the absence of any scientific opinion surveys? Well, Ayagi himself has given us a yardstick which, subjective as it is, is still a reasonable yardstick of what the public thinks of Obasanjo.

In his counter-offensive against the ACF, Ayagi says, quite correctly, that the association has no mandate to speak for the North. Only such elected officials from the region, such as the governors, do, he argued. By this yardstick, Ayagi will, I am sure, agree with me that the members of the House of Representatives have the mandate of Nigerians to speak for the public. Last week they said it loud and clear that Obasanjo’s government is the most incompetent, dishonest, wasteful and dictatorial government the country has ever had. These denunciations may be extreme, but most people and virtually all the newspapers in this country, most of them sympathetic to Obasanjo, agree that the president has, by and large, been a huge disappointment.

Clearly, the problem with Ayagi’s defence of Obasanjo is that he assumes Obasanjo’s problem is one of perception rather than reality. Because of this assumption, Ayagi seems to believe that the solution is to bandy statistics around and people will then see the light. Accordingly, he throws figures at us about how many roads Obasanjo has built or how many road contracts he has been awarded. He tells that with a long list of “honourable, knowledgeable and principled” Northerners like himself serving Obasanjo, how can any sensible person accuse Obasanjo of marginalizing the North? How the mere presence of people like him in Obasanjo’s government automatically translates into benefits for the ordinary man, Ayagi does not say.

By the same token he tells us with Northerners like Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa, Professor Shehu Galadanci and Alhaji Ladan Baki in INEC, how can anyone imagine that Obasanjo can manipulate INEC to reduce the region’s voting strength? No doubt these are all men of integrity and proven ability, but have they not been helpless in the face of Obasanjo’s deliberate starving of INEC of the money it needs in time to carry out its functions?

Because Ayagi believes Obasanjo’s problem is one of perception rather than reality, the doctor of economics thinks he can razzle-dazzle us with figures about the depreciation of the Naira, figures of vehicles on our streets and highways, as an index of improvement in the quality of life of Nigerians, figures about decreases in unemployment, and claims about improvements in the transparency and efficiency of governance.

Ayagi wants us to believe all this even when the president himself has claimed far more modest achievements in his own self-assessment in April when he admitted that the economy has performed “well below its potential”, when he talked merely of his government’s “vigorous policy of INVESTMENT (emphasis mine) in our infrastructure, especially road, energy and water supply” years after the goods should have been delivered, and when the president himself has admitted, on the basic issue of food sufficiency, that “we are far from attaining the level of food security” when the average Nigerian can afford a balanced diet.

Clearly, Ayagi’s defence of Obasanjo is a classic case of trying to be more Catholic than the Pope. And in trying to be more Catholic than the Pope, he seems to have ignored a saying native to his own Kano people which is, Mu ganta a kas, ance wa kare ana suna a gidan su, roughly meaning “I have to see it (the benefit) to believe it, the dog said when it was told that there is a party going on at its residence”.

Ayagi can talk himself hoarse on the dividends of Obasanjo’s government but people will believe it only when they see it. So far most ordinary Nigerians haven’t. The ACF may not have the mandate of Nigerians from the North to speak on their behalf, but as an association, it has a right and a responsibility to tell Obasanjo what it feels. It is a right and a responsibility that not even the Garkuwan Obasanjo can abridge or take away.