After the ignominy of the defeat of his
self-perpetuation bid last week, which was designed only to massage his
large ego, President Olusegun Obasanjo, not quite out of character,
simply looked us all in the eye with a straight face and declared that
he never told anyone he wanted "third term". Nigerians were shocked at
the audacity of their president but I don't think they should. They
should in fact accept the lies with thanks. We have managed to live
through seven years of compulsive lying from the president anyway, so
one more lie isn't going to kill us. It takes some courage and mettle to
engage in the kind of lying to oneself that we see with the Nigerian
president almost on a daily basis, but that is his nature; and we should
stop thinking we can change a man that is well over 70.
The third term project was going to fail anyway whether the National
Assembly passed it or not. It was just that it was cheaper to kill and
bury it at the stage of the NASS because if it ever got beyond the
portals of NASS, the struggle would have left the pages of newspapers
into the trenches. And at that stage, just like it happened in 1966,
people could start openly calling for a military coup. If that spectre
could be avoided, the better for all of us. And if it would take the
president an extra lie to help save the deaths of thousands, we should
accept it and pretend that we believe the man.
But for the purpose of the records, President Obasanjo did indeed
canvass a third term. He shared N50 million bribes to legislators in
order to obtain their consent and imprimatur for the self-perpetuation
scheme. It is just that many of the legislators he attempted to corrupt
had more integrity than him. Since journalism remains the first rough
draft of history, we shall record it, that, yes Obasanjo attempted to
self-perpetuate himself in power and that, yes, he bribed senators to
procure their consent. Beyond that, I am sure many Nigerians would be
ready to forgive the president as long as he doesn't attempt to pull
another rabbit out of a hat.
As it stands today, Obasanjo's public image is that of a failed
president who came into power to a surfeit of goodwill, which he
frittered away because he saw power as an opportunity to get even with
old foes. Obasanjo is viewed today as a very incompetent leader who has
no answer to Nigeria's myriad of problems. Power outage is worse than he
met it in 1999, and after spending more than N1 trillion, all Nigerians
got was a change of name from NEPA to PHCN and a promise from the
minister of power and steel not to expect steady power supply till
sometime in 2056, when those born tomorrow will be 50 years old. He is
also the president who could not revive Nigeria's prostrate refineries
and was so mean and cold blooded as to increase the pump price of petrol
seven times - from N20.00 per litre in 1999 to more than N70 today. The
president will also be remembered for his contributions towards the
phenomenal growth of corruption in Nigeria. When Obasanjo became
president in 1999, Nigeria was about the 27th in the Transparency
International's corruption perception index. A few years into Obasanjo's
regime, Nigeria became number two. Yet, another study in 2002 showed
that more than 50% of the corruption in the country was perpetuated at
the presidency. And there was ample evidence on ground to corroborate
this.
In 2002, after Mr. Vincent Azie, the acting auditor general of the
federation said Obasanjo's men stole N23 billion from the public till in
2001 alone, the president swiftly removed him. And now a few days ago,
the Due Process Office reported that the cost of constructing Obasanjo's
Abuja National Stadium was inflated by N7 billion as if we didn't know
that already. Before then, we knew that even though Obasanjo's
government said that the stadium was at the end constructed for about
N100 billion, the World Bank declared that the stadium could not have
been built for more than N19 billion. In between, we have billions of
naira of the excess crude proceeds, which can still not be accounted
for; the Presidential Library fund raising nepotism; the impunity with
which the president associates with Transcorp, as a promoter even and
the serial misappropriation of budgets. He will also be remembered as
the president who forged an electoral law and one who conducted the most
scandalous elections in the annals of the nation simply to remain in
power against the peoples' will. And to all these, he added the roguery
of bribing senators in order to illegally elongate his already illegal
tenure. Obasanjo could go into history as the lowliest of Nigerian
presidents. The legacy he leaves behind could haunt anyone unfortunate
enough to have an Obasanjo surname.
But the president can still change all that. At least there are still
371 days left from today and this is a long time in the tenure of a
serious president. General Murtala Mohammed didn't need this number of
days to etch his name permanently in the nation's golden books. But to
do that, Obasanjo will have to re-invent himself. In other words, he has
to renew. He will need something of a character transplant. He must,
like Gen. Murtala did in 1975 give up things he cannot account for, and
for him, these are several. For starters, the president must stop lying
through his teeth. All the lies about his "overwhelmingly" winning the
2003 elections only makes him look ludicrous. The president must give
Nigerians some credit for basic intelligence. The president thinks he
can just concoct some things in his head, believe it and then it becomes
true. He also would have to stop associating with some funny characters
around him. Today, Obasanjo's soul mates are Chris Uba, Tony Anenih, Ojo
Maduekwe, Festus Odimegwu, Bode George, Ibrahim Mantu, Lamidi Adedibu
and Co. One hardly sees any decent person around the old man these days.
If the president enjoys the company of these people so much, then he
must be like them. And no one would want a president in the mould of
these people.
He must also repudiate "Transcorp" and forfeit all the shares (about six
million shares) that have allegedly been allotted to him for which he
must have made billions of naira when the shares moved from N1.00 per
share to N6.00 per share during the company's private placement. The
Initial Public Offer (IPO) is expected to be offered at a whopping
N10.00 per share. Which means that by the time the IPO is concluded, the
president would have made a killing of N9.00 x 600,000,000 shares. Since
my calculator does not have the capacity to record all the zeros, I will
leave the final figures to your imagination.
It is also an extraordinary act of corruption to hand over Hilton Hotel,
Abuja, to a company partly owned by the president; especially since the
sale transaction was not too straight. It is even more egregious to
contemplate handing over NITEL and the nation's oil blocs to such an
organisation. Even Abacha whom the president loves to demonise even in
death was not as shameless in corruption as this. Obasanjo must also
return the Presidential Library to the state after May 29, 2007. That
would be in sync with the norm the world over. He must not allow fair
weather friends like Mr. Carl Masters (who declared on the day of the
fundraising that Obasanjo would never return the library to the
government) to decide his destiny. By 6pm of May 29, 2007, he will look
around and find he is alone. Carl Masters and his ilk would be looking
for their next victim.
And if the president wants to change his image and outlook permanently
and be seen as a statesman once again, then he must prepare to conduct a
respectable election in 2007, and not the type of rubbish he supervised
in 2003. He can start this by asking Ahmadu Ali to subject himself to a
proper election within the party. Candidates for elections must be seen
to have emerged the same fair way he (Obasanjo) emerged as a
presidential candidate in Jos in 1998. If he does that, then Nigerians
will start taking him seriously again.
If Obasanjo can for a change begin to see power as an opportunity to
better the lives of the people and not a facility to bring down people
as he currently does, he will start looking good again. But if he
persists in doing things like closing down Intels Ltd, belonging to the
vice president, simply because he wanted to financially emasculate an
opponent, prevent elections to hold in his party according to the party
constitution because he wants to disenfranchise competitors or as is
being speculated, witch hunt his third term opponents and especially
punish the North for going against his third term scheme, then he must
know that he is heading for a flop. Actually that mindset will
inexorably lead to his terminal and inexorable downfall.
But the good news for the president is that it doesn't have to be so.