(http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/thumbnail.php?file=OBJ_566068852.jpg&size=article_medium) Olusegun Obasanjo
Did former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who just quit his job as chairman, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees, really resign or was forced to proverbially fall on his own sword?
That the man is Obasanjo, who wears his integrity as a monk would wear a hood, should be enough evidence that he is earnest. Besides, there is the publicised story of the letter of resignation; and the PDP national headquarters has not denied that the former president indeed handed over his letter to Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, the PDP new national chairman.
Yet, the former president’s sudden quit easily reminds of the Yoruba saying that tarrying too long in the latrine exposes you to the hostile droning of flies, all shapes and sizes. Why would an ebullient personage who, after the failure of an attempt at constitutional amendment to corner a third term suddenly give up the BOT chair, his last minute ploy at political relevance after the “third term” debacle?
And when former Gen. Obasanjo starts grandstanding about getting more time for international engagements, devoting more time for “my Presidential Library”, doing last-minute mentoring and facilitating more foreign investments for Nigeria, you must be sure the old fox is busy at deodorising– and that to keep out the putrid pus of creeping irrelevance.
That, of course, might be incorrect, but look at the sequel of events. When President Goodluck Jonathan was proudly plagiarising the Obasanjo patent of imposing the PDP national chairman, mum was the word from the old soldier, except of course the former president had, in old age, learned leadership by followership by zestfully queuing behind his president. Obasanjo’s voice was so muffled it was virtually the last minute that he was reportedly given the slot of national secretary.
Only a few days hence, the former president had galloped into town, trying to put life into the dead horses of his collapsed political empire in Oyo State and, by extension, the South West. Of all persons, he had to attempt cutting a deal with Rasheed Ladoja, the man he conspired to illegally supplant as governor of Oyo State; and the state chief executive he kept outside while listening to the futile pleas of the late Archdeacon Emmanuel Alayande to save Ladoja’s office, at the height of Obasanjo’s reckless presidential power.
It was this same Alhaji Ladoja in whose house Obasanjo was proposing to eat the trademark treacherous pounded yam: not for anything noble, but to undermine the Abiola Ajimobi government, which has a parliamentary alliance with Ladoja’s Accord Party (AP). Even at old age and after spurning rare divinely gifted opportunities to earn statesmanship, Obasanjo would play hustling politics to the very end!
It was this same “builder of modern Nigeria” that donned ethnic cloak after he had backed a wrong horse in the Speakership tussle; and suggested the rather fantastic supposition that Speaker Aminu Tambuwal and the House of Representatives management step down after two years, in the interest of “justice and fair play” so that the South West (read Obasanjo’s cronies) could take their due slot!
Ironically, in the former president’s last minute attempt to grandstand, all he mentioned were the very totem of corruption, which his presidential tenure nevertheless huffed and puffed to fight: the Obasanjo Presidential Library and even the BOT chair, which he seized by dint of legal corruption.
Obasanjo’s crumbled political empire is a sound lesson to all that whatever action they took in power would come back to haunt them. Nelson Mandela, the immaculate Madiba, needed not create a party contraption to remain relevant in global politics. He left after five glorious years, even if he had constitutional right to continue. Neither did Botswana’s Festus Mogae, to earn global reckoning. The duo’s work spoke and still speaks for them.
Obasanjo’s BOT chair’s resignation is the beginning of the end of his relevance in Nigeria’s politics and policy. It ought to have happened earlier. It is good riddance!
TheNation