The African Vision; Africa Looking Back

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For very personal reasons, I embarked on some kind of self-censorship during General Obasanjo’s recent visit to the United States. Looking back, it certainly was a wise decision. For many Nigerians like me, and perhaps non-Nigerians, who up until now did not hear the big news of that visit, it is worth stating again even at the risk of sounding repetitious. In a question and answer session in Atlanta, a questioner reportedly asked Obasanjo to clear the air on allegations that he (Obasanjo) had remarked that the Igbos should be grateful for what they were enjoying now in the so-called new Nigeria.

Obasanjo was reported to have told the questioner to go to hell. Of course, if you come from a country whose rulers have made a veritable hell, there isn’t much to worry about if you are asked to go to hell. But again, you might worry if that answer comes as a response to a harmless question and from no other person than the President of the Federal Republic.

Sincerely, I would have thought that if someone accused the President of saying that certain people or group should be grateful to him for what they were, supposedly, enjoying under his presidency, that shouldn’t raise eyebrows. Strictly speaking, there are just two sides to this matter. It is either you gently rebut the allegations or you go ahead to explain in what ways the group concerned has befitted.

What is puzzling, however, about Obasanjo’s gaffe in Atlanta is not that the statement was made. It was Obasanjo at his quintessence. My problem is the "ethnic response" his hellish remark has generated. Perhaps that is understandable because it was made in response to a question about an ethnic group. But if we follow that lead, we miss the import of the message and the man behind the message.

Obasanjo does not care about anything or anybody. That is the simple fact. The man is only interested in one thing: power and its trappings. His first commitment is to the so-called international community that facilitated his presidency, of course not forgetting the military wing of the dominant power bloc in Nigeria that made his ascension to power a reality.

It was pay back time last month when Bill Clinton visited Nigeria. After announcing his 4.5 million dollars gift to the country, Clinton in his address asked Obasanjo to prevail upon the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to reduce the price of crude oil. Of course, our dear President immediately promised to do just that.

About the same time this knee-jerk approach to international relations took place, Obasanjo was reported to have gone to Sierra Leone to present to Foday Sankoh a letter announcing his removal and replacement as leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). That act, I assume, was to pave the way for Sankoh’s trial by the war crime tribunal set up by the international community. Whatever happened to national pride and political correctness?

Indeed, Mr. Sanni Abacha (what title does he have over there?) must be squirming in hell. Remember how the man stood up to the international community? He introduced French as the second official language in Nigeria to break the language monopoly of the British and Americans. Abacha took the initiative to bring Foday Sankoh to Nigeria and placed him under house arrest. Don’t get me wrong, there is no nostalgic feeling here. But no matter how hated Abacha was, at least the man was original. But I digress.

Let’s roll the film back to 1976 during Obasanjo’s first coming. Obasanjo wasn’t fighting an ethnic battle when he sent soldiers to schools across the country, I presume to maintain military discipline or when, as commander-in chief, university students were mowed down in a senseless orgy of bloodletting. I don’t think he had any ethnic group in mind when he sacked university teachers for teaching what they were not supposed to teach. It was with the same vengeance that he descended on his kinsman, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. This is exactly what I want his critics to understand. He may have done certain things deliberately to benefit certain groups, depending on who is spreading butter on his bread; but essentially, the man has been governed by his self-serving instinct.

There is another reason why Obasanjo’s presidency should be viewed with the outmost disdain it deserves. The man never misses any opportunity to proclaim he is a born-again Christian. He never fails to tell those who find time for his religious trifles that his second coming was a divine act. I don’t know why anybody in government should make that an issue when Nigeria is not a theocracy.

It is this misguided vision that conditions the mentality that those who are not with me are against me and are therefore condemned to hell. But we all know how Obasanjo became president, the conspiracy and treachery which culminated in the death of the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, Moshood Abiola.

Wole Soyinka once told a story about how Abiola had visited him in his hotel room, knelt before him and pleaded that he (Soyinka) should cease his campaign against Obasanjo. When this incident took place, Wole Soyinka was in the forefront of the campaign against Obasanjo’s attempt to become UN Secretary General.

I don’t know if Obasanjo is aware of this profound show of empathy. If he is, he hasn’t shown it. Even though he is the principal beneficiary of Abiola’s murder, Obasanjo keeps slamming the door in the face of his kinsman, denying him a place in history. But it shouldn’t surprise those who know the Ota farmer, just as the Atlanta Declaration shouldn’t surprise those who have followed his career closely.

Obasanjo is a closet dictator, uppity, unforgiving and brutish. Give him the chance and Big Daddy, Idi Amin (don’t they have something in common?) would look like a schoolboy

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