A conversation with President Olusegun Obasanjo

Join us LIVE on Sunday January 31

5:00PM Nigeria Time

4:00PM GMT

10:00AM US (CST)

Watch and register for the live conversation on our website!

https://www.tfinterviews.com/post/president-obasanjo

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Taming the unbridled four horsemen:

Ebora of Owu and the African renaissance

IT was the 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who described poets as shameless with their experiences as they adopt and exploit these experiences in the beautiful light of lines that turn them into aesthetics. Although not a poet in the conventional or literary sense of the term, His Excellency, Chief Olusegun Aremu Okikiola Matthew Obasanjo, leads his world like one. As he would always say, “I am an epitome of Grace.” Baba Iyabo, as he’s fondly called, shares the sentiment of a poet, which is the remarkable ability to tell one’s story instead of leaving it to others. Unarguably, this makes him one of the few most prolific and discerning heads of states and governments in modern Africa. President Thabo Mbeki, my good friend, is an intellectual— he has my books, and he quotes Mahmood Mamdani as if the President is in my graduate seminar — but he does not put down his ideas as Obasanjo does. But as I told President Obasanjo on December 17, 2019, the last time I saw him in Lagos at a public function launch of my book, there are many writings on him; I have yet to read any satisfactory one that locates his role in the complicated history of modern Nigeria.

Obasanjo is perhaps the most famous Nigerian leader anyone can interview, as controversies trail him just as bees follow the honey. Each Nigerian region has a list of the alleged sins he has committed. To the Igbo, he and Awolowo cost them the war and the end of the Republic of Biafra. To the Christians, he was too soft on the Sharia Law and allowed the North to get away with its introduction. To the Yoruba, he did not develop their region. To those in the Niger Delta, he allowed others to lift their oil. To the Muslims, he is pro-Christian. To the Christian, he is pro-Islam. He has been accused of presiding over the installation of the Constitution that changed Nigeria from a secular state to an Islamic Sharia polarised country! To his successors, he criticises them too much in his critical letters. To the Yoruba politicians who want another Yoruba as president, Obasanjo’s father is an Igbo man! To wealthy business executives, he is jealous of them. To the supporters of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the all-time hero, Obasanjo was accused of preventing him from becoming Nigeria’s president by not allowing the run-off election between Awolowo and Shehu Shagari. And to his own Egba people, he is remembered for saying that MKO Abiola, his townmate at the Baptist Boys’ High School, Abeokuta, was not the messiah for Nigeria. Even Wole Soyinka has reservations for Obasanjo’s character! How ever true that a prophet is not without honour among his own people?

Born to the Owu community in Abeokuta, the Ebora of Owu—another of his appellations — has been instrumental not only to the development of Nigeria but also to the evolution of Africa as a region where some level of hope could still be found regardless of the blinking present and comatose past. Quickly, through his books and accounts of his stewardship in different chains of command, either as a military chief and commander or Head of State of the Government of Nigeria, one can understand, and if interested, write about the intricacies of Nigerian history and its politics since independence. He has been in the loop that long and, in his typical self, has never sheathed his sword to anyone in the arena. From My Command to My Watch and from the narrowly escaped cubic length prison to an adorable seat of power in Aso Rock, President Obasanjo has shown to all that indeed, the erudite Professor Nimi Wariboko of Boston University was not prophesying when he talked about a Nigeria with elastic possibilities.

Through his catalog of experiences in the country’s service and the African continent, Obasanjo shaped and earned for himself a poetic license like none other in a way that transcends the African regional polity to the global. With this license, his assessment in the service of the country, Nigeria, is often overlooked by many vibrant minds each time he wields his big ink-stick on the evolving polity. This gives him another appellation, that which the Yoruba would call, asoro k’oloro gbo, ti oloro ba gbo kini oloro yio se? This translates to a person capable of telling the truth regardless of whose ox is gored.

As the longest-serving head of state in Nigeria, he has consistently positioned himself as a messiah to the state. By messiah, I don’t mean one without blemishes or one that has brought about Eldorado to a debilitating society’s living condition. Far from this. However, those who see things from the Obasanjo’s point of view will say that he has surfaced in the history of Nigeria at critical moments, and in each moment, even in the eyes of his most ardent critics, he left the state better than he met it. This is what staunchest critics cannot deny, especially with the recent history of the country that has shown, yet again, the elastic possibilities in the Nigerian state.

BEFORE taking up the leadership of the state, his outstanding military service cannot be dismissed. An admirer would say that he led his men to the fields in keeping the country as one entity. The unfortunate dilemma and circumstance of the war, the “poetic” legend is documented in his memoirs, My Command. He sees as the final victory for the Nigerian state during the unfortunate war he led with his battalion, the 3rd Marine Commando Division, at Ore. Surprisingly, despite his differences with the leader of the prospective Biafra country, then Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, Obasanjo still held this insightful figure in high esteem. To me, this signals a man who could, without bitterness, go to an all-out war with you.

After the premature demise of his boss, General Murtala Ramat Muhammed, in a heavily condemned coup, Obasanjo became the military Head of State with the responsibility of restoring the democracy that was brutally terminated about one decade earlier. To date, many still refer to this regime, known in history as the Murtala/Obasanjo regime, as the most responsible and responsive government Nigeria ever had. (I am in trouble! The contest over who became the President of the country in the Second Republic that followed made Obasanjo unpopular among his people). Not only will the local government reforms further diffuse the structure of government for a closer grassroots participation, the democratic transition that was promised, supervised, and executed by the regime restored the democratic hope of millions of Nigeria. To a substantial degree, this smelled well for civil right and triumph of constitutional order in place of the juntas that had reigned supreme for over a decade; at least until another proverbial rat took the fish from the cat. Though not without its challenges and accusations, some of which are admittedly valid, the transitioning restored the image of Nigeria in the international community as a democratic state for the first time since 1966 and made the Murtala/Obasanjo regime stand out among equals within and outside Nigeria. The second time Obasanjo would be put to this important corner came about two decades after.

The Murtala/Obasanjo regime focused on Nigeria’s industrial drive, the revival of its agro-economy, and infrastructural development. Following the gospel of a Green Revolution championed by the Murtala/Obasanjo regime, the Ebora of Owu left office as Head of State and headed straight to the farm. At this time, famous artists, most notably Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey, created wonderful lyrics in their jolly records, adding to the program’s popularity among the masses.

In the usual practice or culture of governance in this clime, none of these brilliant ideas at indigenising development in the nascent state were considered worthy of subsequent governments’ attention, not even the one he handed over to. Accordingly, the refineries built have become a museum of untoward relics and political shenanigans. In addition to the likes of the proposed Ajaokuta Iron Steel Company, these infrastructures have become a bottomless pit where billions of dollars are sunk each year in the name of maintenance, construction, and reconstruction that never leaves the paper. In the same unfortunate, or should I say pathetic, manner, the agroeconomic revolution, despite its urgency, has either become a cheap campaign point or been overshadowed by wacked economic policies. Efforts made in this respect have been a pendulum swaying between some notable success stories, which saw to the appointment of Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, the former Minister of Agriculture, as the head of the African Development Bank, and failures which have led to further asphyxiation of Nigerian farmers.

THE other time the Nigerian god of democracy would come visiting, this same man was at the middle of the whirlwind that ushered its presence. That “grace” he so much talked about chose him to lead the transition, this time as a recipient of the outcome. With position comes responsibilities, an experience he had never shied from. Now, he would not only be redefining the economy of Nigeria and redeeming its democracy but, most essentially, the global image of a country at the point of total collapse.

The new millennium in Nigeria can rightly be described as the accumulation of all that characterised the post-colonial Nigerian state over the years. Everything! You can name them, inexhaustibly. Ostensibly, a de-ethnicised insightful retired General with a credential that betrays sectionalism but upholds national consciousness was needed to pilot this entrance successfully. The retired General got down to work surrounded by technocrats who could help conceive and drive home government policies. One of those who worked with him then, now Governor Nasir El-Rufai, regardless of their differences, would later account for how rigorous his boss was. The reinvention of the state was simply his wheel to handle, and the records are there to measure the successes and shortcomings of that stellar team (administration). It bears recalling that crude oil, which has become the only viable source of revenue for the Nigerian state since he left office the first time in 1979, was at this time selling below $40 per barrel, and the treasury was nothing close to managing Lagos and Kano, let alone the whole 36 states and the federal capital territory.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the cumulation of events over the post-independence period has seen the country operating a structured beggar system! Multiple state creation led to various structures of dependency. The federal government was constitutionally overwhelmed. The administration absorbed the heat, releasing into the state steady economic growth, re-membership into the club of nations, and political stability. Until recently, the country has witnessed economic growth and a relative sense of unity and security. In the most remote part of the country, and among the population less informed, the telecommunication sector’s reform is still being recalled, just as those in the cities and well-informed can hardly forget the reforms in the financial sector. Either for political or altruistic reasons, the anti-corruption networks he established in the country exist to date. Yet, his handling of the insecurity issues of the time, from the Niger Delta to the Sharia north and other parts of the country, are being compared.

The twists notwithstanding, his public service trajectory has won the Owu-born elderly statesman a revered place starting from his home town, cutting across African states to the Atlantic beyond. On the count of five, Obasanjo stands tall among the global political figures in Africa. His deep intellectual fecundity has been ceaselessly put into knowledge production for the communication and understanding of the challenges of post-colonial Africa, the way out of the doldrums, and the leading role he had played in all of these. Classify his over two dozen publications in monographs, theses, books, journals and all, in these three broad views, and you won’t miss the point about the agile octogenarian.

IN the coming days, His Excellency will be interviewed on the Toyin Falola Interviews where his views concerning the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — war, death, poverty, and famine — in Africa and how to manage them would be asked. Of course, this would include the insecurity at home and the downturn economic situation exacerbating the already fragile socioeconomic ambiance.

A Biblical passage (John 8:7) crossed my mind as I cumulated all of Obasanjo’s alleged sins: “They continued to question him [Jesus Christ], so he stood up and replied, “Whoever hasn’t sinned should throw the first stone.” A politician must sin. The sinless scholar must write about it! You must hear about them. We will offer a platform on January 31^st for competing opinions.

The interviewers are one journalist, one scholar and a cast of students:

• Journalist and author, Dare Babarinsa was one of the founders of Tell magazine where he served as Executive Director for 15years until his retirement in 2005. He was the Editor-in-Chief/MD of The Westerner news magazine until March.@ 1, 2011. He is now the Chairman and Chief Executive of Gaskia Media Ltd, Lagos.
• Professor Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, Professor of Political Science and Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Babcock University

We welcome him as he shares his thoughts, opinions, and experiences:

Join us live on the 31st of January (Sunday), 2021:

5:00PM Nigeria Time

4:00PM GMT

10:00AM US (CST)

Watch and register for the live conversation on our website!

https://www.tfinterviews.com/post/president-obasanjo