In less than 24 hours, Nigerians will be free from the galling and wicked clutches of Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo. It has been eight long years of pain, anguish, regrets, pettiness in power, massive corruption, nepotism, personalisation of power, meanness, angst, black and white lies, oversized ego, bushmanism, poverty in oil boom, cronyism, election rigging, asset stripping and cultism. The Obasanjo government will go down in history as the worst so far, and, in order to keep it "the worst", it is important that we never forget that man called Obasanjo so that we do not repeat the mistake of having another Obasanjo again. I advise every Nigerian to hang Obasanjo’s photograph in his house, not as an admirable memento but as a scarecrow to remind us of the disaster of the last eight years.

Nigeria cannot conceivably survive another Obasanjo. It is only in Obasanjo’s Nigeria that the people can become poorer in spite of the kind of oil boom the world has witnessed in the last eight years. Every oil-producing nation of the world, excluding Nigeria but including Equatorial Guinea, Angola and Russia recorded improvement in the quality of life of their people in the last eight years as a result of the oil boom. Saudi Arabia, for instance, is building a new city. Russia’s streets have become neater and there are several new high rises. But in Nigeria, in spite of the lies of government agencies that the economy has grown and that inflation is down, the World Bank has given us the true position: Nigerians have become poorer in the last eight years.

Obasanjo is the only president Nigeria has had whose associates kidnapped a sitting governor and nothing happened to them. Obasanjo is the only president who sold the nation’s assets to cronies (and himself) on the eve of his forced departure from office. Obasanjo is the only president who, for eight years, did not implement a single budget. Even though election-rigging has been a feature of Nigeria’s past elections, Obasanjo took the crime to a new level that has left all decent people gasping for breath. Nigeria’s outgoing president will soon find out how unpopular he is. He will soon find out that, indeed, he has no friends and he is the most hated man in Nigeria. When he no longer has authority to award contracts, or appoint or sack ministers, or award oil blocks, he will know his true worth.

He made life miserable for the majority of Nigerians. He refused to repair the refineries and kept the prices of petroleum products unimaginably high so he and his business partners would continue to feast at the expense of poor Nigerians. Yesterday, he effected another whopping N10 increase in the pump price of a litre of petrol again. Nigeria is the only oil-producing country that imports fuel. Obasanjo loves it that way because it serves his purpose. Political assassinations flourished under his tenure because he gave cover to criminals. Chris Uba was protected by armed policemen throughout the period he was in the good books of the president, even though he had committed the treasonable felony of kidnapping a sitting governor. The smoke from the gun that killed Aminosari Dikibo had hardly cleared when the president declared that Dikibo’s assassins were faceless armed robbers. Tafa Balogun, Obasanjo’s immediate past inspector-general of police, paraded some armed robbers as the murderers of Marshal Harry, a top ANPP chieftain. The IG also displayed a cheque belonging to Harry, which he said his men (the police) had confiscated from the armed robbers. Nigerians almost believed the police boss until Mr. Don Etiebet, the then ANPP chairman, appeared angrily to inform the public that he was the one who took the cheque to the police a week earlier.  Tafa never countered him and never apologised to the public. Today, Obasanjo is telling us that a drug baron killed Bola Ige. Why is it that the president knows so much about the operations of armed robbers and drug barons? It must be either that the president attends their meetings or they (the armed robbers and drug barons) are members of his government. That is the kind of president we have had to contend with in eight years!

If Obasanjo doesn’t like a governor or any other public office holder, he simply sends the EFCC after such a person. But if you are in his good books, you can steal your state or organisation dry, and kill as many people as you wish to; nobody will harass you. Nigeria has never had any leader who was so chummy with criminals like this. Our impressionable children are also learning fast. A few days ago, a boy caught cheating in an examination in Uyo barked at the invigilator to leave him alone. "What did you do when they were rigging the elections?" he asked.

But there is one thing Obasanjo’s successor must emulate from him. Thankfully, the president has offered the incoming president, Umaru Yar’Adua, the template of governance for the first 100 days. This is even more so since Yar’Adua has said he will continue with the president’s reforms. First, all these last-minute contract awards, oil block allocations and the sales of AP, Port Harcourt Refinery, etc, must be revoked. And it should not matter that Yar’Adua is beholden to Obasanjo because he cannot be half as beholden to Obasanjo as Obasanjo was to General Abdulsalami, the president’s predecessor. General Abdulsalami released Obasanjo from prison, granted him state pardon to enable him contest the presidential election of 1999 because ex-convicts like him were barred from contesting, and organised some campaign funds for his presidential campaign. But the first thing Obasanjo did after he was sworn in as president was to annul everything Abdulsalami did in the previous six months. So let Obasanjo’s actions be Yar’Adua’s guide and reference book. Let the incoming president annul every appointment, contract, oil block award and privatisation done between January 1 and May 29, this year. But let him be more civilised than his benefactor in doing this. Those awards that have been done according to laid-down due process should be re-approved but all those that smack of cronyism should stay revoked.

But let me also recommend something drastic for Yar’Adua, which I know he will find almost impossible to swallow but which, indeed, could make him a living legend. The recommendation is in fact not sui generis as it has already been suggested by the 48 Nobel laureates under the aegis of the Elsie Wielsel Foundation. The most significant event Nigerians want to witness this year is Obasanjo’s exit. That will be achieved tomorrow. But Nigerians and the world also know that the process that brought in Yar’Adua cannot responsibly be termed a democracy. In fact, Nigerians knew Obasanjo was incapable of superintending a respectable election. That was why several opinion moulders had suggested that an interim government conduct the 2007 elections. We all knew that the president had no single responsible bone in his body and was too dishonest to be trusted with the elections, but we were helpless. The Senate, which should have woken up to a national call to duty, was too spineless to be of any use. So since we have found ourselves in this position, let Yar’Adua’s government be that interim government. Let him rule for 18 months (as advised by the 48 Nobel laureates) and, during this period, purge the nation of Obasanjo’s aura, help review the portion of the constitution that we desperately need to amend and conduct acceptable elections everyone will respect. That way, Nigeria will stop being the laughing stock that it is today in the comity of democratic nations. If Yar’Adua could be courageous enough to do this, he would receive the goodwill and acclaim no leader has ever received in this country. He would instantly become a hero, an exemplar and the father of democracy in Nigeria. He would also have nurtured and taken to a new height the family business that started from his father Musa Yar’Adua, the minister of Lagos affairs in the First Republic, to his elder brother, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, who was political number two between 1976 and 1979 and who unsuccessfully attempted to be the president of this country. If he ever decides to follow this very painful but exigent course, he will instantly get the legitimacy which he will never get if he and the sycophants around him continue to pretend that he has won the presidential election.

The alternative, of course, would be to hold on to a dubious mandate. If he chooses this, he will find himself always having to look over his shoulder and always having to deal ruthlessly with enemies, both real and imagined. Great leaders are altruistic and self-sacrificing. Lowly leaders are not. That is the difference between an Obasanjo and a Mandela. I advise Yar’Adua to choose to be a Mandela.

But for all of us Nigerians, we must never forget that someone called Obasanjo was here. We must never hand over Nigeria to anyone like Obasanjo again. Somebody must be able to at least manage a home before we hand over Nigeria to him. And anytime again we intend to package an ex-convict for the presidency of our country, we must first invite a psychiatrist to examine his head. Nigeria must never again be handed over to a stark raving lunatic.

Obasanjo is the worst of the lot. We must never allow any leader to beat this terrible record!