Buhari, Winston Churchill and Obasanjo (II)

Quite expectedly, the missive former President Obasanjo posted to President Buhari arrived with a bang at the public domain. Both the traditional and social media were set afire immediately after. The message in the special statement came down hard on the government for failures to live up to the expectations of Nigerians. In fact his assessment of performance of Muhammadu Buhari as President was so low that he asked him not to run for a second term of office. Should Buhari decide to run again, Obasanjo promised that he would be in the vanguard of a coalition to frustrate the effort. There is no doubt that Obasanjo was riding on the crest of popular opinion that had been openly expressed in the media. He had said so in the letter, ‘Wherever I go, I hear Nigerians complaining, murmuring in anguish and anger’. Over the years Obasanjo had chosen his time to release this kind of bomb of a letter. And typical of the crafty, war-tested General, his intervention would always surprise and aggravate the government and citizens alike.

One could understand the frustration of the former President. He probably recalled his days when in 1999 he moved from Ota Farm into the Presidential Villa and things moved at a frenetic pace. There were no dull moments, only upheavals in the public service, in the National Assembly and the country at large. On assumption of duty from day one, Obasanjo hit the ground running, making all his key appointments and taking them all into a retreat where his vision and plans for the country were spelt out. From then on we saw the creation of new institutions which were given to fresh hands and then unleashed into the entirety of the Nigerian public service for holistic reforms in many sectors. There is no doubt that Obasanjo’s reform programme that changed the face of the nation has yet to be surpassed. May be it is the sense of urgency he ran affairs of government in his time that he found lacking now. He must be finding the ponderous and lackadaisical approach to governance of this administration very frustrating.

It was the lot of Lai Mohammed, the Information Minister to give a reply to Obasanjo. Lai Mohammed, the consummate public relations man, usually self-assured, suave and never lacking the words to explain away any situation, was seen that day on television, stuttering and stumbling over the words of a script that I guess didn’t have his input. Displaying an unusual amount of obsequiousness, the Minister lamented that probably due to Obasanjo’s very busy schedule he, ‘may not have been fully availed of developments to the government’s efforts to revamp the economy, which was battered by the consequences of overdependence on a commodity as well as unprecedented pillaging of the treasury’. He then went to list achievements of the administration in spite of the challenges they met on the ground. The Minister carefully avoided the accusations of nepotism and cronyism. Probably the government felt that it would not want to join issues with Obasanjo on these now which unfortunately gave credence to his assertions. One could read from the Minister’s demeanour that may be Obasanjo had hit the bullseye, as darts players would say.

I was not surprised that the Minister omitted to confront the accusation of nepotism and cronyism. I again raised the issue with my senior colleague whom I discussed with earlier and he was quick to tell me that, ‘nepotism is at the heart of the Presidential system of government. So long as the entire country entrusted its destiny into the hands of one person, then he should be given free hand to use whosoever to get the job done’. I came away from the discussion that the issue of nepotism had defied rectification even in the older democracies.

In the United States a much older democracy they have been grappling with the issue for a very long time since when John Adams, the 2nd President (17971801) decided to appoint his son John Quincy Adams as an ambassador. This son later also became the 6th US President (1825-29). In recent times President John F Kennedy (1960-63) appointed his brother, Robert, as Attorney-General and we are all aware of the shenanigans in the Trump Presidency today where the daughter Ivanka holds an official position in the White House as a Special Assistant to the President and her husband Kushner is also a Senior Adviser to the President. Even though there is a US Federal antinepotism statute 1967, they circumvent it by not claiming salary for the job.

In Latin America and the Asian democracies, the Presidential system in many instances just became a licence for the emergence of dynasties whereby sons succeeded fathers or husbands were succeeded by their wives. In South Africa President Zuma just made an unsuccessful attempt to manoeuver his former wife to succeed him after his two terms. Here in Nigeria it is common practice in the state administrations. We have a farcical situation in one of the states where the brother-in-law to the Governor is the Chief of Staff in the Government House while the wife, the sister of the Governor, is a Commissioner and cabinet member.

In any case Obasanjo who is now sermonizing against nepotism would not be exonerated from its taint. As my senior colleague pointedly asked, ‘when his daughter was made a commissioner during his Presidency in his home state, Ogun, and later even became a Senator, which grumpy old man wrote a letter to him? And mind you all the time Obasanjo was in the State House, the place was swarmed with his buddies, unofficial advisers of all hue, Nigerians and foreigners alike who all had serious inputs into policy making and implementation. You recall Andrew Young who served the United States as Ambassador to the United Nations in the late 1970s. He was virtually a permanent resident in the Presidential Villa. It is all part of the crony circle that Obasanjo is now shedding crocodile tears about’.

In any case all these barbs from the Ota Observatory would have been deflected with ease if the government was seen to be proactive and the President was up and about, dousing tensions here and there. It is incredible that the President allowed local issues of herdsmen and farmers to fester and become a rallying point of his opponents who have readily utilized it to woo even some his ardent supporters particularly in the middle-belt states. The sour relationship with the leadership of the National Assembly is yet to be sorted out which affects not only approvals of appointments from the President but even more crucially the annual national budget which had always been very late in the year since the beginning of this administration. Obviously this affects the performance of the public service to no end.

What should worry the supporters of the President should be the complacency tinged with a dose of cockiness within the government circle and the APC. There is a feeling of entitlement pervading their consciousness that since the Nigerian Armed Forces have degraded the Boko Haram and reclaimed all the lost territories they have the second term in the pocket. The government and the APC also believe that having Buhari as a leader with his integrity still unspoiled that they have the best brand to re-present to the country in 2019. Nevertheless Obasanjo’s letter must be a wake-up call to both the Presidency and the APC to get their acts together and make amends if they want to return to power after the first term.