Did Jonathan steal Obasanjo’s watch?

I met him in May in Rwanda during the ADB Annual Meetings. Obasanjo electrified the audience anywhere he went. Any panel on which he sat, he was the centre of attraction. Everybody wanted to hear Obasanjo’s views about everything.  He also put up his theatrics, that native intelligence that had everybody reeling in laughter. Africans from all walks of like, mostly non-Nigerians, stood up and gushed glowing, unsolicited tributes on Obasanjo.  In fact his entry into the hall caused a stir as we all wanted to take photographs with him.  The man was still strong and incredibly witty; a bad choice for an enemy.
Let us not be carried away. Obasanjo is not the perfect person he claimed to be in his book.  His recently-completed 8 years tenure was not the totally remarkable period in our lives as Nigerians as he would want us to believe. Just like the Goodluck era, he too enjoyed good fortune in that oil price was very high in his time. Thinking about it, I realized that the most criticized Nigerian leaders have governed in periods of austerity. Balewa, Abacha, Buhari, even Yaradua. These guys came at a time when our crude oil resource was either practically non-existent or underpriced.  Baba’s second coming was therefore also a period of corruption – even though it may not have been as bad as today.  He surely could have done better with governance, and laying the right moral and ethical foundation that he likes to wax lyrical about.
But back to Baba’s contentious book, upon which the Federal Government of Nigeria, through the instrument of proxy legal gymnastics, has declared an equivalent of a Fatwa. The FGN did a great advertisement for that book, such that at any cost, the whole world is now looking for the book. And this is another season of boon for lawyers, who are ready to explore the crevices of the law and come up with shocking conclusions. I thought the logical thing to have done, is for anyone whose name featured in the three-volume book, and who takes serious exception to what was written, to take the man to court. If he was reckless and wrong, his punishment should be several lawsuits right?  Why seek to ban a book, which is essentially someone’s personal opinion? Then to make matters worse, the book is out already.  Thousand of copies were sold on the first day, some at N40,000 for the set of three, and everyone is guarding them, photocopying them. The pirates already has their hands on it and it has been seen in our ubiquitous ‘go-slows’.
What is the furore about the book? Is it about the status of the person who wrote the personal opinion? Is it because he put it in book form?  
Obasanjo castigated dozens of people in that book. Not only the president. I will try to quote him on a few people in this article.  In this age of social media, the cat is out of the bag. And even if Baba is found guilty of ‘contempt of court’, having defied an order ‘not to publish’ the book, it remains to be seen what the courts – or the government – will do to him. Jail him? Arrest him?  That will be the day!  Give it to the ‘Ebora Owu’. He has created a name for himself. Others can only aspire.
He seems afraid of no one, and of death – at least not anymore. He probably is trying to make peace with his God. And I would generally commend him for putting out there some details that will do Nigeria a lot of good. I have always known Nigeria to be a land of secret; a land of no history. Obasanjo’s book is a good attempt at changing that. I must also confess, that the book gave me some hope, that when all seems bleak and scary, there are some important Nigerians who will try and save this country from Armageddon.
I never knew Obasanjo was observing, as Jonathan went about claiming “The Igbos were his biggest constituency”, or that “The votes he got in Northern Nigeria were from the Igbos living in the north”, or as in the case of the October 1, 2010 bombing of our 50th Anniversary, that “He knows his ‘people’, the Ijaws and they didn’t do it”, even though they claimed to, and the man being prosecuted for the crime, Henry Okah, is an Ijaw man, who also claimed that the Jonathan team wanted them to dump the blame on northerners. The subsequent emergence of ‘Boko Haram’, gave them ample crimes to dump on ‘northerners’, who are evidently also, the victims.  No leader in our history has been this divisive!
Anyhow, for the purpose of those who haven’t seen it, this is what Obasanjo had to say about Goodluck Jonathan;
“Jonathan is lacking in broad vision, knowledge, confidence, understanding, concentration, capacity, sense of security, courage, moral and ethical principles, character and passion to move the nation forward on a fast trajectory. Although he might wish to do well, he does not know how nor does he have the capacity to. To compound his problem he has not surrounded himself with aides sufficiently imbued with the qualities and abilities to help him out…
He has great opportunities, ..,and if he misses them it will only be due to his inadequacy, myopia, personal interest and self-aggrandisement, lack of sagacity, wisdom.”
 
On Wole Soyinka
“Wole remains an enigma… He will not like anybody else to outdo him as a social critic. … I am, however, often amused by his political comments which are almost always self-serving. For Wole, no one can be good nor can anything be spot on politically except that which emanates from him or is ordained by him. His friends and loved ones will always be right and correct no matter what they do or fail to do. I understand it has been his character from his schooldays… I, and I am not alone, find him a misfit as a political analyst, commentator or critic. It is thus good that he did not foray into politics. He is surely a better wine connoisseur and a more successful aparo (pheasant bird) — hunter than a political critic, not to talk of what he would be as a politician.

On Brigadier-General Godwin Alabi-Isama
“The Tragedy of Victory, which he wrote in 2013 to criticise my book, My Command, which I wrote in 1980 to give a personal account of my operations and exploits during the civil war, is typical of him – clever but dubious, unreliable, and arrogant… True to his character, he wrote a book of fiction, which he wanted people to believe as factual. If Alabi is complaining of abject poverty, one wonders what the families of our colleagues who died in the civil war should be complaining of.
The man wrote about everybody – Yaradua, Ribadu, Tanimu, el-Rufai, Chukwumerije, Ruma. Friend and foe alike. He leaked almost all the secrets they told him. I think it’s typical of the elderly.  For me, I give the elderly what they want – their space, their right to vent, to get angry and grumpy, and their prejudices.  But why is he this angry with the president? Did Jonathan ‘steal’ his wristwatch?