In our series of viewpoints from African journalists, Nigerian writer Sola Odunfa considers the significance of his country's warring generals and feuding justices.

Many people, who did not know Nigeria and Nigerians well, thought last week that the country was tottering towards serious political crises.

Firstly, because of the open quarrel between two ex-presidents who, though retired, were also army generals and secondly, the storm at the apex of the country's judiciary.

Both coming almost simultaneously could have destabilised many other nations but pauperised Nigerians had more important problems than irritations among the elite to grapple with.

Many Nigerians read newspaper reports of the ex-presidential exchange of insults with amusement and poked fun at "shameless old men".

After all it is the Yoruba of the south-west who in their wisdom say that an elder who wears a string of corn on his waist makes himself the playmate of hungry chickens.


In this case ex-Presidents Ibrahim Babangida and Olusegun Obasanjo were not only doing the proverbial naked dance in the marketplace but they also had chickens flying all around them.

Why then would children not chuckle derisively at the sight of old men describing each other as fools?


Mr Obasanjo was the obvious target of the attack - and nobody messes with a village farmer, notwithstanding his robes at any given time.

His response was immediate and typical, that Gen Babangida was "a fool at 70".

The following day Gen Babangida gave it back, that Gen Obasanjo was a bigger fool. Details expunged!


Gen Babangida, known as "IBB", said in his 70th birthday commemorative press interview that in his eight years in office he "was able to manage poverty and achieve success while somebody for eight years managed affluence and achieved failure".

When I read the interview I missed anything personal in it.

As far as I was concerned Gen Babangida, or any other past leader, had the right to describe his governance as the best since creation and whoever disagreed also reserved the right to present his own version of history for us to judge.

The following day Gen Babangida gave it back, that Gen Obasanjo was a bigger fool. Details expunged!

I can continue this sad story only by revisiting the conclusions reached by Professor Wole Soyinka on the two men after a close study of both in his memoir You Must Set Forth At Dawn.

He says Mr Obasanjo is "pathologically in need of proving himself - preferably at the expense of others" and "intolerant of criticism".

Gen Babangida, he says, is "suave, calculating, a persuasive listener, conciliator - but with sheathed claws at the ready" who "never seemed to mind being proved wrong, he still carried out his own decisions anyway".

Someone must have called the attention of the generals to those descriptions - which are generous compared to what one may hear on the streets - because the exchanges stopped as abruptly as they started.

Gen Babangida was a dismal failure at the last general elections; Mr Obasanjo, who saw himself as the political commander of the south-west, was roundly rejected at the same polls with the routing of the ruling People Democratic Party (PDP) in his home region.

That is the depth of their current relevance!