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OBJ, the prowling goat
seller
on december 01, 2014 at 12:59
am in people & politics
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*Olugegun Obasanjo
By Oceherome Nnanna
Former President Olusegun
Obasanjo is haunting his hand-
picked former protégé, President
Goodluck Jonathan, like a
malevolent ghost. You may
wonder why OBJ, after four years
as a military ruler and another
eight years as an elected
president, is still butting like a
stubborn, demon-possessed ram
at the doors of Aso Villa, Abuja?
What does he still want? What
did he forget in the seat of
power after occupying it for 12
years? Why can’t he just go home
and enjoy his new-found
affluence after his latest eight
years as president during which
he doubled as Minister of
Petroleum Resource for six
years?
If you put this question before
Obasanjo he will tell you it is
because he “loves” Nigeria; he is
a great “nationalist”, and he
cannot keep quiet when things
are going wrong. He will
conveniently hide the fact that he
is the cause of many of our
problems.
Political interests
He will not accept responsibility.
Instead, he will divert attention
and point accusing fingers at
others, making accusations that
he is also guilty of a million times
over. In the process, Obasanjo
succeeds in hoodwinking a few
gullible, uninformed Nigerians
and raises applause among
those whose political interests
resonate with his objective of
bringing down a sitting
president.
But those of us who know him
probably more than he knows
himself are not carried away. We
know his motives and methods
all too well. Obasanjo’s estranged
daughter, Senator Iyabo
Obasanjo, in a letter in January
this year in which she disowned
her father, told us Obasanjo
believes in his heart he “owns”
Nigeria. President Jonathan, in
his own angry rejoinder to a
windy, scathing attack by
Obasanjo, likened the Ota poultry
farmer to a goat seller who, after
selling his goat and pocketing
the money, still holds on to the
goat’s tether rope. In other
words, Obasanjo, after
handpicking and installing
people in power, seeks to control
them. When they refuse to be at
his beck and call, he starts to
fight dirty in the public square
because he has come to see the
Nigerian seat of power as his
personal booty.
After all, he fought the civil war
and collected the instrument of
surrender from Biafra. We have
since heard the truth about how
Obasanjo fought that war. One of
the civil war commanders,
Brigadier Godwin Alabi-Isama, in
his book: The Tragedy of Victory,
actually described OBJ as a
coward. In various interviews
after the book was published, he
disclosed that Obasanjo has
bullet wounds on his buttocks.
This means he was shot while
running away from enemy
onslaught! But he makes loud
noises about his civil war
“heroism” and feels entitled to
exclusive freebooting on our
national estate.
Obasanjo is confronting GEJ
because the president is a
gentleman. He could not try it
with the late President Umaru
Yar’ Adua, who was much
tougher and savvier in the game
of power than Jonathan.
As sick as Yar’Adua was, he was
able to curtail Obasanjo’s goat-
seller mentality and keep him
tightly leashed. Those were the
days when people like Nasir el
Rufai actually bolted to America
and only returned to become a
troublemaker because Jonathan
is a gentleman.
This same Obasanjo troubled
General Babangida when the
latter was in power because
Babangida respected him. But
when he tried it with General
Abacha, we know what
happened. Obasanjo came out of
jail in 1998 looking like an
exhumed corpse.
Besides, Obasanjo is a master in
the game of hypocrisy. He likes to
call other people thieves, and he
is the first to accuse another
person of being corrupt. The
idea is to divert attention from
his own unquantifiable deeds
that fabulously enriched him,
both as a military leader and
elected president.
Sound Sultan, one of Nigeria’s
most creative avant-garde
musicians, has a song he
entitled: “One day bushmeat go
catch de hunter“. In it he sang:
“Ole de shout ole”.When you
catch a pickpocket red-handed,
to avoid being lynched he begins
to shout: “ole!, ole!!” (Thief!
Thief!!).Was it not under
Obasanjo that bags of money
meant to induce lawmakers to
impeach a political enemy of the
president were displayed in the
House of Representatives? Yet he
calls MPs “looters”.
When Abacha raised the pump
prices of petroleum in 1994 he
established the Petroleum Trust
Fund, PTF and used the proceeds
to intervene in infrastructural
reconstruction. Where did
Obasanjo put proceeds of eight
price hikes that took fuel price
from N22 to N65 per litre over
eight years? At least, Jonathan
ploughs back his own increase
from N65 to N97 into a fuel
subsidy regime that guarantees
steady fuel supply and funds for
the implementation of Subsidy
Re-investment Programmes,
SURE-P, nationwide.
Fuel subsidy was bedevilled by
corruption, but it is working. We
are enjoying it. But we can’t see
anything Obasanjo did with his
own extra N43 per litre. Billions
were sunk into the refineries but
they never worked.
Billions were wasted on
Independent Power Plants, but
turbines were imported and left
for years at the ports because
they could not be moved inland.
Government companies were
sold for pennies to fronts and
cronies. But in four years,
Jonathan has laid down a clear
agenda to overcome the
challenges of the power sector. It
is very slow-going, but is moving
forward, with zero reports of
corruption in the sector which is
now mainly in private hands.
Yes indeed, Jonathan has his
problems as a leader. He is too
laid back about fighting
corruption. It doesn’t seem to
bother him. President Jonathan is
too much in the background as
my leader. I like my leaders there
up front, inspiring me with
words, deeds and examples. I
like them tough and decisive, but
always putting the interest of the
nation first. I don’t like walking
up front and looking back for my
leader.
Thirdly, I don’t like the way
Jonathan has handled Boko
Haram. If he had done the
needful things two years ago, we
would not have the second
largest number of displaced
persons in the world, with parts
of our territory under devilish
Salafist Islamists.
I also have reasons to believe
that if the Jonathan regime was
given the support it needed, it
would have recorded more
successes than any other in our
history. The quest by regional
hawks to snatch power by all
means, tied to the Boko Haram
terror war and jackal-like
opposition, have taken a toll on
all of us. No regime has been
sabotaged by the same people it
strives to save from their
enemies the way some Northern
leaders have undermined the
Jonathan regime. People who
destroyed Nigeria in their 40
years of total brigandage are
ganging up as the “opposition”
to return us to where they left us
in 1999, and Obasanjo has
become their fire-eating
generalissimo.
If Jonathan is a problem,
Obasanjo created it by selecting
him to pair with a terminally ill
Yar’Adua, so that he (OBJ) would
call the shots from Ota. Yar’ Adua
and Jonathan were his “Plan B”
after he failed to grab third term.
I agree with former Speaker,
House of Representatives, Umar
Ghali Na’Abba, that if Obasanjo
looks into the mirror he will see
the trouble with Nigeria.
The goat seller wants his goat
back after pocketing his profit.
Well, Nigeria is not Obasanjo’s
goat. The earlier he gets the
message the better for him – and
us all.

Why arent other past leaders attack gej why always OBJ why why?