Providence set them apart, paradox brings them together. The one is Olusegun Obasanjo, a Nigerian and the other is Eliot Spitzer, an American. They are two important men separated by geography and race, but are ineluctably yoked by certain contradiction between public posturing and private conviction.

Obasanjo is the immediate past president of Nigeria, Spitzer, two weeks ago, resigned from his job as governor of the state of New York, USA. These are two men who advertised themselves as paragons of probity, integrity and men almost beyond reproach. Indeed, they did work assiduously at their public face to such artful correctness that they became a reference point or a beacon, if you like, of human decency and personal integrity.

That was the face they showed to the world and the gullible, less critical world cheered with delirious abandon. Such was the case with both men from their respective heights until quite recently, when forces beyond them stopped all the drama, all the pretences and pulled down the façade to reveal another face, the face of the ogre – the real persons behind the masks. And how does Mr. William Shakespeare put it? “There is no art to find the mind’s construction on the face,” Macbeth says of the treacherous Banquo.

And how did Obasanjo and Spitzer give up the mask to show up that they are indeed white sepulchers? First, Eliot Spitzer. A 48 year-old who became the governor of New York last year January, Spitzer is the son of a successful real estate magnet.

He trained at the revered Princeton and Harvard Law School. He earned the reputation as “Mr. Integrity” when he was the Attorney-General of the state. As a vibrant, articulate middle-age intellectual, he showed off himself as an advocate of decency and decent engagements.

He was a champion of corporate integrity and so he campaigned against corporate corruption. Corporate America and the investing public therefore saw in him the vicarious agent of their collective yearning; he identified with them and showed disdain for unethical and immoral resorts. He became popularly known as “Sheriff of the Wall Street” as a result. In 2006, ridding on the back of his popularity and goaded by public cheers, he won the governorship election quite conveniently.

He raised very serious issues concerning prostitution and prostitution rings as head of New York’s Organized Crime Task Force. Once, he was outraged at the occasion of the arrest of 16 persons who were operating a high-profile prostitution ring, saying, “This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multi-tiered management structure.

But nothing more than a prostitution ring.”
Spitzer was everywhere. He was your typical whiz kid – brash, impatient with slopishness, uncondoning of the morally and ethically induced and inspired. He was both an advocate and campaigner for a morally and ethically clean America. He was, in 2006, named Time magazine “Crusader of the Year.” That was how highly he was held by the American society.

He was even touted as a future VP or even president of the United States. He condemned organized prostitution, calling it modern slavery. He signed into law, legislation that prescribed penalties for those who patronized prostitutes.

But all that was his public face, the one the world saw and cheered and honoured. Then the other, more important but sordid face – the private, hidden side of him. Against all his public showing, Spitzer had all the while been spending quality time and resources with prostitutes, patronizing the same maligned and condemned rings. The paradox of his life and times, yet.

He was caught, as the cliché goes, red-handed, while negotiating with a prostitution ring that runs the Emperor Club VP. Unknown to the public, the club was supplying him prostitutes on a steady run, at $3,000 per hour. It showed that Spitzer, the “Mr. Clean” had been reveling in maximum dishonesty to the public and his office, and blatant infidelity to his wife, Sara, and three teenage daughters.

His negotiation for a prostitute was recorded in a wiretap document, which revealed him as “Client 9.” His nemesis was a 22 year-old prostitute named Ashley Younans or Ashley Alexandra Dupre, with Kristen as trade name.

When Spitzer appeared on CNN the other day to acknowledge his guilt and fall, his wife was beside him. Poor woman. One can only imagine what it took her to agree to stand by her bare-chested adulterous husband and hypocritical moral and ethical campaigner. He resigned his governorship position as a result. US laws frown seriously at his secret indulgences.

That was Spitzer the super dupe. What about his Nigerian double in this counterfeit game, Olusegun Obasanjo? Like the American, Obasanjo rode on the crest of probity as the incorruptible one; the one with zero tolerance for moral and ethical breaches.

He became president immediately he came out of prison where he served time for what is now termed trumped-up coup charges by the late General Sani Abacha’s evil regime. Obasanjo came out with the impression that he had seen God and he had become a man of God – a man without guile; a man given to humble and compassionate meet; a man of the people – the right man for Nigerian; the right man for the moment. He threw such bait and the rest of the people caught and ran with it.

He was popular; he was loved and he was supported on all sides. Men of God held vigil for him and his presidency, ordinary Nigerians wished him well, sincerely. More than their expectations from him, Nigerian people rallied around him because, like the American Spitzer, Obasanjo sold himself as a crusader for all things that are of good report, especially in area of the twin rectitude – moral and ethical.

He declared war on corruption and gave the impression that with him in control, Nigeria was going to be set free from the menace of corruption. To prove that he was not joking, he set up anti-graft agencies, suggesting that the Code of Conduct Bureau as given by the Constitution, was either not strong enough or well-equipped or both to fight this blight called corruption. Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Independent Corrupt Practices (and other related offenses) Commission (ICPC) were created and supported by the Due Process Office, now Bureau for Public Procurement. The agencies were everywhere, hauling economic and financial offenders into prison.

At least, a serving police chief was arrested, prosecuted and jailed by the EFCC. A senate president got the boot and was later prosecuted. Obasanjo himself pointedly accused his Vice of being corrupt, what with the Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF). He made lethargy of his reminder to his ministers and aides, that any of them found to be corrupt, would not only be sacked, but he or she would also be sent to jail.

With all of that, Nigerians believed in him all the more. Some, at a time, were even rooting for him to extend his term beyond the constitutionally prescribed four years of two-term. But at this time, the scale had started falling off the people’s eyes; the essential Obasanjo had begun to emerge with his horns and long, ugly claws.

The paradox then came full circle, but it was almost late in the day. When he started manifesting, Nigerians were aghast – wondering about the person who had come as angel of light. His profile was revealed in all its undisguised details

Even today, Nigerians are still wringing their hands in regret and frustration. They now behold, in absolute wonder, the man who came out of prison with a miserable N20,000 in his account and tattered businesses, now a business mogul with hands and legs in every thriving sector of the economy. And the one that may have now left the people speechless are the revelations of how his administration deceived the country that it was working to provide adequate and functional electricity and in the process squandered $16 billion in the most riotous manner.

We are now being told of how Obasanjo, the high priest of anti-corruption, the Arch-angel of due process and the apostle of accountability, presided over a government with almost absolute power (given his domineering self) and watched (?) his friends, relations, associates and cronies sat and made a debauchery of the country’s resources. If Nigerians are speechless at the bazaar that was made of the electricity project which was not directly under the president at that time, I want to believe that people will begin to commit suicide by the time such searchlight is beamed on the activities in the oil and gas sector. Obasanjo retained that portfolio through out the eight years he ruled.

Spitzer and Obasanjo are our twin characters; the two hearts that beat as one. But unlike Spitzer, Obasanjo has remained unyielding, unrepentant and unruffled. He is neither sober nor perturbed even by the sordid revelations that assault us today, on daily basis, since the House started asking questions on how we could have bought darkness with $16 billion. These are two men who duped their people with angelic public showing, but turned out to be something else.

These are two individuals who seduced their people with guises and caused them so much anguish, frustration and regrets. There is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. And the Good Book says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked who can understand it all.”

Spitzer, though, has some redeeming aspects about him. He felt sufficiently sorry and humiliated. “I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself,” he regretted. Obasanjo, like the man that he is, does not have any regrets for all his failings and duplicity. He has a thick skin, an hide even. And one wonders if he believes in God and in death. But not to worry. The flood is coming and it will be here sooner than we ever thought or imagined.