OBJ’S moonlight tales
By Eric Osagie (ericosagie@sunnewsonline.com)
Monday, April 09, 2012
I confess: I like him. Chief Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo. I am in love with OBJ, the comedian. Truth is, if he wasn’t a soldier and politician, he would certainly have had a soaring career in the comic business. You can ask those who have encountered him in his elements.They surely can attest to the veracity of the above characterization: OBJ leaves you breathless whenever he is engaged in his antics! But the trouble is: OBJ often overacts; many times finding it difficult to distinguish his audiences and the subject of discourse. Everything must be reduced to a joke at every time on every occasion. That constitutes the hubris of the actor or comic who finds himself overacting and ‘over joking.’

That was what happened last week when the former president decided to treat Nigerians to tales by moonlight, drawing his materials from what happened in broad day light! He told stories that would ordinarily have made us reel in laughter; stories that Ali Baba and other top comedians would have found ingenious. But, instead of laughter, OBJ’s pre-Easter jokes provoked incredulity and outrage in us. He made us wonder what kind of man he was; what kind of man was our president for eight years, and before then, military head of state for three years. He made us begin to doubt if OBJ is a man or spirit or rather if we had not all along been dealing with a phantom. Is this man real? What does he think of us: numbskulls, a people suffering amnesia, delusion or simply, mumu people?

Now, what did OBJ say? Speaking on Network Africa, a Channels TV programme, the former president was asked to shed light on his infamous attempt to subvert the constitution through a dubious third term agenda. Instead of confessing and apologizing to the entire nation for that ill-fated plot to play God, OBJ, like the proverbial Ostrich, chose to deny himself and deny what was obvious. He said he never wanted third term. He never told anybody to pursue third term on his behalf. And if he had truly wanted it, he would have got it anyway because there is nothing he asked God to do for him that He never granted!
Many Nigerians who watched the televised programme and read about it in the newspapers have been asking themselves if they saw or heard aright; if it was truly OBJ talking. How could a man be denying what was so obvious? How do you tell an old man he is telling lies? I am lost for words. Many Nigerians also are, especially those who were in the forefront of the anti-third term battle.

If OBJ never wanted third term, so on whose behest were the promoters fighting? Who would have been the ultimate beneficiary if the plot had sailed through? Who was the unseen hand behind the monstrous funding of the project? How come no one stopped them? How come OBJ never for once dissociated himself and the presidency from the plot? How come it is only when it failed and many years after, OBJ is now telling us he never wanted third term?
So, if OBJ, as he claims, never wanted third term, why did he become so ruthless with opponents and perceived opponents of his third term agenda? Why did he engage in a roforofo fight with his then deputy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, virtually stripping him off all functions and reducing him to a figure head vice-president?

Can the former president tell his countrymen why he fell out with his erstwhile friend and comrade, Gen.Yakubu Danjuma and why he withdrew his oil licence, OPL 246? In an exclusive interview with Daily Sun, Danjuma had revealed to Nigerians how OBJ wanted his support for the third term and why he declined to be part of the charade. I can still hear his voice as he thundered during that interview held at his Asokoro residence: “ We did not fight the civil war and build this nation for one man. As a matter of fact, what Obasanjo is fighting for is a fourth term, not third. He was head of state in 1979, that was his first term; second term was 1999; third term was 2003. What he wants by attempting to amend the constitution is fourth term. I urge the National Assembly to kick it out when it comes before them.” True to his admonition, the third term bill, masqueraded as constitution amendment, was roundly trounced at the National Assembly.

Is Obasanjo then saying that people like Danjuma didn’t know what they were doing fighting what didn’t exist? And if he never wanted third term, why then was he so crossed with his friend and ally, a man who had assisted him twice to become head of state and president in 1979 and 1999, respectively?
So, he never really wanted third term? What then was the genesis of his trouble with the outspoken former governor of Abia state, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, a man he had once publicly declared ‘action governor?’ Why did he come down so heavily on the man and his business empire before dragging him to the EFCC? Was his major ‘sin’ not because of his unyielding opposition to third term? What happened to Hallmark bank, Southgate bank and Slok Air? Was it not in a desperate bid to clip the wings and break the will power of the promoters of the business concerns because they were opposed to his elongation plot that they were clamped on?

Did the then emperor not instruct the then minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Mallam Nasiru el-Rufai to find a way of ‘squeezing’ Kalu’s interests in Abuja because the ‘man has become too stubborn’. El-Rufai, a man of strong character, told me he refused to carry out all of Obasanjo’s machinations against Kalu, one of the arrowheads against the sit-tight plot, because it wasn’t the right thing to do.

He never wanted third term? Could the former president tell the world who opened the nation’s vaults for the naira and dollar rain that flooded the National Assembly during the fierce struggle for third term? Who doled out N70m and N50m to senators and rep members respectively? I was in Abuja during that dark era of our history and I personally led a team of reporters to where legislators were struggling with their bags of Ghana -Must -Go in the dead of the night.
Holed in my car, I saw some of our law makers struggling with their loot which we dutifully reported in Daily Sun? So, who was responsible for that show of shame? If OBJ didn’t do it, why didn’t he, as a self-professed anti-corruption crusader, order an inquiry into the acts of perfidy?

....David-West and Jonathan’s church-gate!
When news broke that President Goodluck Jonathan (or rather his Otuoke village, as his spokesman, Reuben Abati says) had admitted receiving a church gift from an Italian construction company, my mind immediately raced to former Petroleum minister, Professor Tam David-West, a social critic and renowned academic.
Once upon a time, West was accused by the military regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida of drinking tea and accepting a wristwatch gift from a foreign company which had business dealings with Nigeria. For drinking that expensive tea and accepting a wristwatch gift , a military tribunal was set up to try and sentence him. He promptly bagged a life! The professor spent over 11months in inhuman and degrading conditions in Barma prison Maiduguri and the maximum security prison, Lagos.
The Supreme Court later absolved him of any wrong doing. David-West was cleared of the corruption charges hung on his neck by the Babangida government which wanted to nail him at all cost for reasons best known to it.

Over 20 years later, a sitting president has agreed that he indeed solicited the assistance of a foreign construction company in the construction /renovation (or whatever) of his community church. Contrary to our code of conduct for public officers which forbids the solicitation or acceptance of gifts of any kind from contractors to government, the president and his handlers say they find nothing wrong in the act. How can the donation of a small church be construed as a bribe? A bribe, small or big, is a bribe, holler the opposition. And the matter rages like bush fire in harmattan.

The matter is quite simple: the president erred. It is possible he didn’t think of the consequences of his action when he jokingly asked Gritto to assist in the church project. In this part of the world, a gift or dash is an acceptable way of doing business even though it is patently illegal. Government officials randomly get all sorts of gifts to ‘wet the ground.’ This invariably shoots up the cost of doing business. That’s what is called corruption. Those who donated or renovated the church obviously sought to compromise President Jonathan. Why didn’t they build a church for him when he was not president? How many churches have they built in other parts of the country as part of their corporate social responsibility? Are they now a missionary group or pure business concern?

Let the president have the humility to admit his wrongdoing and apologize to the nation, with a promise never again to engage in such compromising act. That’s more sensible than trying to argue through the criticisms or make light of the matter. A nation is governed by laws not arbitrariness or the whims and caprices of one man no matter his status.

If David-West could be so hounded for an offence he never committed, what do we make of the open ‘confession’ of the president that he actually asked for and got a Church gift? In a country with respect for rule of law and values, the president would today be filled with penitence over his acts of indiscretion and naivety in the Otuoke church-gate, while David-West would be celebrated as an upright public officer who was wrongly accused and punished but vindicated by the highest court in the land! But then, this is Nigeria.

hans22: And if he had truly wanted it, he would have got it anyway because there is nothing he asked God to do for him that He never granted!

Naija god don suffer.