By Maiwada Dammallam
Obasanjo’s penchant for spitting and rubbing it on the faces of Nigerians is unarguably next to none. This much could be confirmed from his recent vituperation about Nigeria becoming a failed state and divided under Buhari. As always, Obasanjo foxily chose a safe forum to unleash his anger and take his pound of flesh off Buhari for miniaturizing his ego — once the biggest in Africa — and effectively neutralizing his suffocating hold on Nigeria’s political power steering wheel.
Addressing big boys among venomous co-Buhari-haters, the Afenifere, Middle Belt Forum, Northern Elders Forum, Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo and Pan Niger Delta Forum, Obasanjo in as indecorous and shameless manner as imaginable trying to confuse gullible Nigerians by turning history upside down while making nonsense of common sense.
To begin, Obasanjo was clever by half when he refused to say how long Nigeria started sliding down to become the failed state. Was it before he was picked straight from prison a pauper, packaged and installed the President from whence he emerged stupendously rich, almost proportionate to Nigeria’s decline under his 8-year reckless locust supervision? Had Obasanjo read his books properly before trying to lower the esteem of President Buhari using Nigeria’s predicament as a weapon, sure he would’ve known that the 8 years he ruled Nigeria and the 8 years he meticulously handpicked the next set of those to rule Nigeria contributed more than 90% to today’s predicament of Nigeria that’s giving him sleepless nights. Let me explain further.
What was Obasanjo thinking when under his watch $16 billion was voted to boost power and jumpstart the economy but was brazenly stolen? That Nigeria will not collapse under the weight of a raped and dysfunctional economy asphyxiated by poor electricity and self-serving policies designed to enrich lazy few at the expense of the hardworking majority? What was he thinking when his administration was busy selling multi billion naira public investments to few associates for peanuts as it did Transcorp Hilton? That Nigeria will get out of such economic rascality a great country? I’ve never regarded Obasanjo as smart. Each time he appears I always see an opportunist who was always at the right place at the right time either by design or by accident but truly, I’ve never thought his case is this bad!
It’s not such a big arithmetic to understand that any country whose president could shamelessly subvert normalcy and arm twist Governors to contribute from lean public treasuries for personal projects like Obasanjo’s so called public library is on a sure way to collapse. It’s funny then how Obasanjo, after multiple tenure as a military dictator and a democratic President, is still intellectually incapacitated and unable to solve this very simple arithmetic. How Obasanjo could not see and appreciate the simplest fact that if Nigeria could survive his rudderless and dangerous supervision and also survive its offshoot, certainly it could survive on auto-pilot with its engine dead and cold!
It was under Obasanjo that while tertiary institutions were degrading at an alarming rate between 2004 and 2007, he and his erstwhile Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, “smartly” took advantage of the situation to start their private universities as an elitist solution to the problem leaving Nigerians to go to hell! If Obasanjo/Atiku’s logic fail to upset one’s sense of right and wrong, may be the fact that Obasanjo, a pauper who came out of prison with almost nothing but could start and finish a private university from scratch while in office could! Nigerians are not idiots patience, docility and all!
Obasanjo’s low estimation of the collective intelligence of Nigerians is as unprecedented as it’s shameless. In his desperation to inflict harm on President Buhari, he described the National Assembly’s fresh constitutional review exercise as a waste of time and resources. But wait a minute, shouldn’t Obasanjo first appreciate there’s at least a National Assembly to conduct fresh constitutional review instead of the “N50m-per head” National Assembly he bequeathed Nigeria which, in case he’s so senile to recall, he attempted to bribe to get a 3rd term — his biggest “nation building project” that few patriotic Nigerians resisted and for which he’s still angry? If any idea could be described as a cross-fertilization of stupidity and idiocy (“stupidiocy” for ease of reference), it couldn’t be more than Obasanjo’s latest vituperation.
If by any chance it’s the soldier in Obasanjo that’s pushing him to the edge of decency on the basis of the ongoing crisis of insecurity, at least It should make sense to him that this is an inherited issue left behind for Buhari to resolve by insensitive and unpatriotic past administrations among which his administration is the 2nd most prominent with the inept one he forcefully inflicted Nigeria with carrying the trophy.
Had his PDP and the rats he planted when he was chased out did the right thing, Nigeria wouldn’t be battling insecurity today, at least not the type and magnitude it’s battling today. Has his PDP applied the $2.3 billion meant to re-energize the military, Boko Haram might’ve been history and banditry might not have been an offshoot. But Obasanjo will rather ignore the degradation of the armed forces while using the little left ragtag of what’s once a strong and disciplined army to decimate towns and villages to massage his ego and resolve personal animosities as he did Odi and Zaki-Biam.
And because it’s Nigeria, not only he could get away with it, he could still participate in public debates concerning Nigeria’s development with a false sense sir of patriotism. Just when Nigerians will be courageous to call off his bluffs and deal with him more as the problem he is than the solution he pretends to be to the Nigerian project is another subject of debate.
Meanwhile, let it not be lost to Nigerians that Buhari is not the problem. He’s as much a victim of the sustained machinations of exhausted and disoriented characters like Obasanjo. Nigeria’s trip to dishonor started long before Buhari’s second coming. Actually it’s the reckless mismanagement of its resources and potentials by people like Obasanjo that forced Buhari out of retirement and into the murky waters of politics to salvage what’s left of its potentials and build on it.
With a little sincerity of purpose, even a dunderhead could appreciate that it’s easier to destroy than to build and, if it took Obasanjo and PDP 16 years to take Nigeria to the low level Buhari inherited, it should take Buhari longer to painfully build what they destroyed. And yes, even a dunderhead would appreciate the silence of these savages while the medication and healing process is ongoing.
- Dammallam wrote from Abuja.
