The Generals’ letters

The only trouble with former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s letters is that they are always tinged with malice. His recent letter to President Muhammadu Buhari reminds me of the one he wrote in 1990 against President Ibrahim Babangida. Otherwise, he is a good letter-writer. I remember the deluge of abuse and ridicule he received then which forced me to re-state then, as if it needed re-stating, that the general had every right to express his views on any issue and barring the limitations imposed by the laws of libel and slander, he is entirely at liberty to say what he pleased.
I further noted that “General Obasanjo is one of about half a dozen Nigerians or so who sometimes at grave personal risks ignore all the dangers, scale Mount Olympus and bring the gods down to earth. Once the god descends, there is an opportunity for true believers and the infidels alike to look over the deity once again. Sometimes both sides find that it is a molten image, or that it has the feet of clay.
“The creation and maintenance of gods have always had their problems. Those who worship often deny the right of those who do not. The gods themselves are most of the time “tormented with lies” by their worshippers often with disastrous consequences for both worshipper, the worshipped and sometimes innocent bystanders.” At the time I wrote, Obasanjo hadn’t joined the little select club of men who became the heads of state of their countries twice in one lifetime. (Buhari has since joined.) Now, he (Obasanjo) has joined the gods himself. The way the ruling party bosses reacted when his letter arrived illustrates how high he is placed on the power pedestal. It is said that, shell-shocked, they lost their nerves, were lost for words, and, in an almost disorderly fashion, postponed their meeting.
General Obasanjo has mastered the uncanny art of reading Nigeria’s political barometer. And the difference between his current letter with President Goodluck Jonathan’s was that Jonathan’s was strained, Buhari’s was less so. Some of the allegations he made against Jonathan were sheer fiction, for instance, the training of sharp-shooters and snipers to take out political opponents. The allegation of round-tripping in a Buhari administration would have sounded fanciful if there had not been the grass-cutting scandal and the Maina ‘government magic.’
Obasanjo was generous in his assessment of Buhari’s fight against corruption, and the war on Boko Haram. But people of goodwill would admit that as soon as President Buhari declared his assets publicly with his Vice President, he went to sleep on the fight, leaving it mostly to Ibrahim Magu, Prof. Itse Sagay, and a few spirited agents of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Occasionally, Magu was left to swing on the ropes in the chambers of corruption also called the National Assembly. It broke the heart of many when the President refused to enlist the National Assembly or his party in the fight. Boko Haram will be defeated as soon as the Nigerian Army gains some insight into the inner workings of the terrorist organization. Many think there is intelligence failure on the military’s part, eight years into a war against a rag-tag force of mostly Kanuri Nigerians.
Barring the above, therefore, Obasanjo rendered a fair and accurate report of the Buhari stewardship. That’s why the letter seemed to command so much attention. First it brought the god down to earth, so that the deification of Buhari lost its hold on sycophants, and credibility of an indispensable president gave many a lot to chew on. All those who had constructed their political castles with Buhari as their cornerstone are having to re-examine their floor plans. The huge propaganda infrastructure and expertise which had created the “savior” mystique seem to have fallen apart. It is pathetic the desperate efforts to prevent Benue State from conducting a mass burial of their murdered citizens. Which demonstrates the use and wisdom of putting up our dirty linens for the world to see in the electronic age. Hiding bad news almost always leads to political and governmental irresponsibility. It is easy to forget that precisely six months into the Buhari administration, the worst massacre in Africa in 20 years happened in Zaria. It was nerve-racking watching President Buhari treat it as if it were a non-event. The bereaved Shi’ites were not even allowed access to the bodies of their loved ones. The Kaduna State Government icily disclosed in a panel of inquiry hearing how 347 Nigerian citizens were buried in mass graves! The Shi’ites think the figure is a joke, they had lost close to a thousand adherents, they said.
Obasanjo is given to exaggerations and hype in his letters. This time he was more circumspect except in one instance where he suggested that Buhari was “weak in the knowledge and understanding of the economy,” which is a merited ridicule for a president who, during his campaign, promised to turn one Naira into one US dollar. But on the issue of foreign affairs, Obasanjo was quite unfair and inaccurate in speaking of “his (Buhari’s) weakness in understanding and playing in the foreign affairs sector.” No Nigerian leader commands the credibility of Buhari, even former US President Barack Obama to whom Nigerian leaders were toxic, found him respectable.
Fulani herdsmen seem to have gone overboard on President Buhari’s accession. Being a cattle man himself, Buhari was expected to quickly and wisely find a solution to the provocations of the herders. There is no evidence that he deigned to work on the issue, even when eminent Nigerians like Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka denounced the government which he had solidly supported. The catalogue of Fulani herdsmen’s depredations is so lengthy that at the time Buhari came to power, hundreds of incidents were in the files and records, the herdsmen had been named as the fourth most violent terrorist organization in the world. Yet these were not enough to raise red flags for General Buhari. The purported statement issued by President Ibrahim Babangida intersected with the Obasanjo letter on the Fulani herdsmen. The greatest issue on which Nigerians are soured with Buhari’s stewardship is the killings and destruction by the herdsmen.
The amusing aspects of the generals’ letters were the efforts of the authors to shore up their legacies in government. Obasanjo indulged in shameless self-glorification. “I believe that the situation we are in today is akin to what and where we were in…1999. The nation was tottering” Then, the messiah (Olusegun Obasanjo) rode in. What “saved the situation” was “(my) government of national unity…We had almost all hands on deck. We used people at home and from the diaspora and we navigated through the dark cloud of those days.” Babangida was proud to remind Nigerians that “since after my military years that metamorphosed to being the only Military President in the history of Nigeria and my civilian life, I always have one clear objective that freedom can only be achieved through democracy.” As if June 12 (1993) did not happen.