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When Two Fools Collide,  [Opinion]

MENAFN - All Africa Global Media - Tuesday, August 23, 2011

When Two Fools Collide,  [Opinion]

Aug 23, 2011 (Daily Trust/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --

Every suitable African adage was evoked when the duo of General Babangida and General Obasanjo engaged each other in a verbal brick bat that was as un-statesmanly as it was foolish.

Ironically they both took delight in calling each other 'fool'. First was the common one that says 'when two elephants fight it's the grass that suffers' then there is 'silence is the best answer to a fool' which neither general wanted to heed and then there is 'when you fight with a fool no one can tell the difference' which must be what the generality of Nigerians must be thinking now.

Admittedly General Babangida fired the first shot when he used the occasion of his birthday to criticise Chief Obasanjo's eight-year performance as president. The shot was uncalled for and ill-timed, for as anybody with a good advisor knows, those who live in glass houses cannot afford to throw stones. It probably comes from his state of widowhood. I mean not having a better-half to advise him on what to say when he was a day younger than seventy, must have been his undoing. Anyway thank God for his decision to marry again, this verbal slip could have been adequately checked by a well-meaning spouse, if only to save their glass house.

Knowing what we know about former president Obasanjo, it is impossible to expect him not to respond to such criticism. And true to character he did so with gusto. As the newspapers gleefully reported, he called Babangida, a fool at seventy, a man who should be pitied, a man whose accomplishments were far less than his. In his own words, 'Well, I said, Babangida must be pitied and shown sympathy rather than anger or condemnation because of the old saying that a fool at 40 is a fool forever. And I would say a regret at 70 is a regret too late. Well a regret at 70 is a regret to the grave.'

Then ill-advisedly the Babangida team did not ignore Obasanjo's remark. His media aide quickly responded by saying Obasanjo is 'the greatest fool of the century' and with his record low-level morality any criticism from him should be seen as a compliment. Then he said that Obasanjo had failed to respond to the substance of IBB's criticism rather he chose to attack IBB's personality and for that he was reminded that even his own son had accused him of incest, so he had no moral authority to judge others. I entirely agree with Yinka Odumakin of the Oodua people's congress when he said the two generals should be 'allowed to dance naked in public' because that is just what they are doing.

But while the two former presidents think they have such great differences that they had to wash their dirty linen in public to prove so, we ordinary Nigerians only see a lot in common between them. First is the fact that after eight years on the saddle, neither of them wanted to leave office. We are all living witnesses to the numerous Maradonic tactics IBB adopted in order to continue in office as civilian president but which were frustrated by a Nigerian public totally wary of his unending transition programme. We had diarchy for the first time in Nigerian history because IBB couldn't convince himself to let go. This was when all state governors in the country were civilians but the president remained a military man.
Before then was when he introduced two government-created and funded parties, refusing to register all those founded from the grassroots. When he forced Nigerians to go 'a little to the right' into NRC or 'a little to the left' into SDP, they obliged him and actually held conventions to pick their flag bearers, but by the time they emerged, General Maradona had a surprise for them. He disqualified the primaries, thus causing Shehu Yaradua of the SDP and Adamu Ciroma  of   the NRC  to  lose  their  candidacy. When another contrived convention produced Chief Moshood Abiola and Alhaji Bashir Tofa, it culminated in the infamous June 12th imbroglio and the rest is history.

IBB was finally forced to 'step aside' on 26th August 1993, not because he wanted but because the atmosphere was too hostile for any more tenure elongation attempt.

Obasanjo's attempt at a third term began almost from the moment he was sworn in for his second term. All sorts of underhand tactics were used to liquidate the opposition, to dig up dirt against those who wouldn't play ball and by changing the chairmen of the ruling PDP based on their feelings about his third term bid etc, etc. In short Obasanjo's inordinate desire to stay beyond 2007 became the guiding principle of his second-term to the extent that all other sectors of the country were relegated to the background in this great pursuit. When it became an open agenda and the National Assembly made the heroic move of throwing out the bill, a lot of politicians paid dearly with their offices for opposing him. So what is the difference between IBB and OBJ when it comes to sit-tightism?

When Nigerians talk about corruption they say IBB's government institutionalised it. And though you cannot prove the institutionalisation in concrete terms, one has only to look at the many laudable and expensive programmes began by his administration but which had very minimal impact on ordinary Nigerians to see why. There were DFFRI, MAMSER, and the People's Bank to mention a few. These were well- thought out and patriotic projects on paper, but because their implementation was fraught with corruption we can't see what was accomplished through them. One has only to look at the activities of the failed contracts and failed banks tribunals set up by the Abacha government to know that massive corruption had gone unpunished during IBB's time.

The eight years of Obasanjo came and eclipsed all that though. It was during Obasanjo's presidency that Nigeria continued to rise higher on Transparency International's corruption index till we reached the very top. One report particularly stated that over fifty percent of this corruption takes place in the presidency. Evidence of this abounds in the overnight millionaires the administration boasts it had produced in the country and of course in subsequent legislative probes which indicted presidency officials and members of the business community. Issues of bribe-taking, as happened in the cases of Halliburton, Siemens and others all lend weight to the massive corruption that characterised the Obasanjo presidency. So tell me, by what yardstick is his administration radically different from IBBs?

People talk about the grandeur of the Otta farmhouse residence of the former president yet they say nothing less about the hilltop mansion of the former military president. Does this make them more or less alike? They say it was IBB's Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, that wiped away Nigeria's middle-class and entrenched poverty in the country,  yet OBJ's  harsh economic policies,  especially the deregulation  of   the  petroleum  sector did no  less.

Nigerians were exposed to poverty never known before in the history of the nation, and at a time when excess crude earnings was a jumbo phenomenon too. How ironic!

I have my doubts when IBB's aide Prince Afegbua said that 'The histories of both of them when put to public scrutiny comparatively, shows that IBB is far glowing and instructively stands poles apart from Obasanjo.' This is because though both are former generals and former presidents, their services to the nation were tinged with tales of missed opportunities and misplaced priorities and the inability to fight corruption seriously. Yes, history will be the best judge of their deeds but I doubt if either of them will make it to the top ten list of Nigeria's heroes, if their record as presidents will be the chief yardstick.

So while they trade insults and malign each other forgetting that as fathers, grandfathers and former leaders they ought to know better, we Nigerians must not intervene.  Because when men of   their stature make fools of themselves we can only warn that as far as we can see, neither of them was qualified to cast the first stone.

Copyright Daily Trust. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).