Obasanjo, Fulanisation and Islamisation (2)

Last week I promised to return to this subject matter to explore possible reasons why former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, whom many of us considered a statesman resorted to name-calling directed at a particular ethnic group and religion. Readers may recall that Obasanjo had said that the deadly activities of Boko Haram insurgents plus kidnapping and the herder and farmer entanglements is as a result of West African Fulanisation and African Islamisation, among others. What additionally caused consternation and raised many eyebrows was the choice of venue for making this inciting and divisive speech. He was said to be addressing a church event in Oleh, Osoko South Local Government of Delta State.

Many concerned readers wondered why I had to bother seeking for reasons to understand Obasanjo’s utterances. I believe we should fathom out why he not only behaved out of his character but also out of the character of all the living Heads of State. His statement could be misconstrued as a hate speech and interpreted as ethnic and religious bigotry, which Obasanjo has never been associated with. A reader even asked me to recall an article I wrote when Obasanjo sent one of his put-down letters to President Muhammadu Buhari.

I recall that in the article captioned, ‘Buhari, Winston Churchill and Obasanjo’ I referred to his penchant for being unduly critical of every regime at every stage he was out of office. In the early 1980s he had occasion to fall out with his successor, President Shehu Shagari. Barely a few days into the second term of Shehu Shagari’s government Obasanjo descended on them with devastating criticism on how they were mishandling the economy. Riding on the crest of negative public opinion Obasanjo also accused Shehu Shagari’s government of wanton corruption. Obasanjo had also gone ahead, against all conventions, to make the criticism public by giving a copy of the letter to the Press.

In his autobiography, Beckoned to Serve, President Shagari said he was perplexed at the public criticism by someone whom he thought had access to him. In fact, by 30th December 1983, disturbed at the implications of Obasanjo’s withering putdown on his administration, Shehu Shagari had arranged to reach out to Obasanjo. That day he was on his way out of Lagos travelling to Abuja for a short rest. He wrote in the book, ‘I called Shehu Musa (the SGF) and asked him to travel to Ota (Obasanjo farm and home) the following morning in order to see General Obasanjo and find out why he has been making embarrassing statements against the administration. I urged him to explore the possibility of my meeting the General as soon as I returned to Lagos’.  Shehu Shagari never returned to Lagos as President because his government was overthrown the next day by soldiers who installed General Muhammadu Buhari in the State House.

Obasanjo’s public criticism of Shehu Shagari’s government appeared clairvoyant and presaged a change. Bouyed by that successful outing he became emboldened at going after regime after regime and putting them away until General Abatcha temporarily stopped him by clamping him in jail for alleged coup attempt. Obasanjo was released after Abatcha’s death. He stood for election and became President in 1999, but as soon as his two tenures finished he picked up the gauntlet of being a perennial critic again. He didn’t spare his immediate successor President Yar’Adua and President Jonathan who took over when Yar’Adua died. In fact, in his haste to distance himself from President Jonathan, Obasanjo famously tore up his PDP card as a final break not only from the actors in the regime but also the party he had slaved to build and lead for many years.

One interesting aspect of Obasanjo’s tirade against all these past heads of government was that it was always timed to some low moment in the life of the regime and which added fuel to an intended military coup or an electoral failure leading to regime change. Obviously Obasanjo had seemed to enjoy the spotlight when making these famous admonitions. He had an incredible sense of timing, and regime after regime fell well choreographed to his public admonitions. He became an Ombudsman, an Oracle and finally in a giddy moment he even referred to himself as a Watchman. To crown it all, he even named his three-volume memoir, which was unveiled in 2014 as My Watch.

However, things refused to work according to what the oracle had set out this time. Everything went well initially like some of those well-directed dramas that had sad ending. There was the usual public falling out with President Buhari and all the razzmatazz that followed. Then Obasanjo had a well-orchestrated return to the warm embrace of his Deputy, Atiku Abubakar, whom he had spent years abusing. Prominent clergy on both sides of the divide were cajoled to bring the two men together. Despite all that, unfortunately, at election time the regime change refused to happen.

Many observers were of the opinion it was this failure to orchestrate a regime change that destabilized him and led him to make these kinds of statements that are so completely out of character. That’s not how statesmen comport themselves. We expect far more from the deep intellect of Obasanjo on how to get the country out of the clutches of the armed bandits rampaging in the country as robbers and kidnappers. Ethnic labelling is the stuff of gossips at mama-put and pepper soup joints not for Army Generals who had fought in wars to keep the nation together.

Oops! In the last piece I had mentioned that former President Obasanjo had visited the home of the slain Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf in Maiduguri to commiserate with the family in 2011. B. G. Mohammed from UMTH Maiduguri has written to point out that the visit actually was to Baba Fugu’s family. Readers might recall that Baba Fugu who was Mohammed Yusuf’s father-in-law was invited and slain by the Police for an undisclosed reason.

UNVEILING THE FIRST LADY: I heaved a huge sigh of relief when it was reported last week that the wife of the President will now be appropriately called the First Lady. That is as it should be. I recall that in the heat of the campaigns candidate Buhari in an interview published in Weekly Trust of 26/12/2014 had promised to abolish the Office of the First Lady. He said, ‘the (office of the) First Lady is not in the constitution, so there is no official role for them’. I responded in an article captioned, ‘Rein in the First Lady, don’t abolish the office’ published in the Sunday Trust of 22/2/2015, imploring him to jettison the idea of abolishing the office, should he win the election.

Admittedly, there is no constitution of the Presidential system anywhere in the world detailing anything about the office of the First Lady, yet it could be said to be a matter of convention over the years that the office had become firmly ingrained in our psyche. Even then I asked the President on assumption of coming to power not to abolish the office but to rein in the First Lady so as to utilize the office to add value to the Presidency. Now after the first four years it will be a matter of debate if this First Lady had been sufficiently reined in, but there is no doubt that she has been outspoken on a number of issues, and she had paid her dues during the campaign. She could go to the next level and be addressed as First Lady.