Disappointed, somewhat, to read Atiku, 79, saying he fed and clothed Obasanjo and supported his family when the former president was skint after emerging from prison. That revelation must have the taste of ash dissolved in dog urine.
Some things should remain interred beneath the sediment of history. Obasanjo should not be getting rinsed this way at approximately 90 years of age, and certainly not by a man approaching 80. But that is where they have both found themselves.
Obasanjo’s third or fourth career has become the periodic lobbing of heavy ordinance allegations Atiku, who, admirably and until now, had displayed almost monastic restraint. Year after year, Obasanjo has portrayed his former deputy as the embodiment of corruption, disloyalty and every other political vice. Atiku’s silence seemed only to encourage the bombardment. Perhaps Obasanjo mistook restraint for surrender.
What Atiku has now done is remove the conversation from the lofty pedestal on which Obasanjo has always preferred to stand and drag it into the fetid realm of memory, where favours rendered, debts owed and inconvenient truths reside.
That is also why I have always found it curious that Obasanjo occupies, almost by default, the position of Nigeria’s permanent moral referee. It is a status that sits uneasily with his own history.
His own children have, over the years, painted a picture of a man very different from the austere patriot he often presents to the public. Gbenga accused his father of being consumed by power and placing political ambition above family and principle. Iyabo was even more devastating, describing him as a hypocrite whose carefully cultivated public image bears little resemblance to the private man she knew.
Gbenga also made deeply personal allegations concerning his father and his own former wife. Those allegations were denied, but they became part of the public record because they came not from political opponents but from within Obasanjo’s own family.
Whether one accepts or rejects those accusations, they were extraordinary enough to impose a measure of humility on anyone. They should make one less eager to hand out certificates of virtue and damnation to others. The same may be said of the many controversies that trailed the Obasanjo presidency.
His unsuccessful attempt to secure a third presidential term remains one of the defining episodes of his years in office. He has consistently denied seeking a tenure extension, but many contemporaries, including his own daughter, have insisted that the project was real.
His administration was also dogged by the PTDF controversy, which involved money being spent on items unrelated to the Fund’s statutory purpose of developing manpower for the oil and gas industry, including the purchase of a Peugeot 607 for Ms. Lamide Adegbenro, said to be a “service provider” to him.
Then there was the Julius Makanjuola affair, another episode suggesting that Obasanjo’s anti-corruption credentials have always been more celebrated than unblemished. Makanjuola, a former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Defence and Obasanjo’s cousin, was prosecuted over a N400m fraud. Just before judgment could be delivered, the Attorney-General, Kanu Agabi, exercised his constitutional power of nolle prosequi to discontinue the case. Whatever the legal justification, the controversy remains part of the historical record.
None of this proves that Obasanjo was guilty of every allegation ever made against him. It does, however, demonstrate that his own public life has been accompanied by serious controversies, disputed claims and unresolved questions. That alone ought to inspire a degree of restraint before assuming the role of the nation’s final moral authority. Instead, Obasanjo carries on as though he alone was entrusted with Nigeria’s moral compass.
I sometimes suspect that when Obasanjo stands before a mirror, he does not see Olusegun Obasanjo. He sees an amalgam of every virtuous and heroic figure who ever walked the earth, from Sumeria and Mesopotamia to the Incas and the Aztecs. In that reflection, everyone else is morally compromised while he alone remains history’s incorruptible witness.
I do think anyone who has worked on LAWMA truck should have very few or no complaints at all about how awful someone else’s aftershave smells. A man whose own public life has generated so many controversies should exercise greater caution before assuming the office of Nigeria’s perpetual dispenser of moral verdicts.
