*Photo: Chief Olusegun Obasanjo*
The OBJ rebuttal of Aremo Segun Osoba’s book after eight years is what writer Ta-Nehisi Coates calls the politics of self-exoneration. Here is an excerpt from my upcoming book:
The former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, did not address in his letter a few issues that Aremo Osoba raised. One, if he had high-level engagements with elders of the Afenifere above the governors of the region, how did they relate to all the intrigues of undermining the southwest governors? He did not say whether or not he had a truce with the Yoruba governors. From his own confessions, the elders were not at one with him. Did he meet with the governors ahead of the 2003 polls as Osoba and Chief Bisi Akande alleged in their books? If he did, what was the essence of the meeting? He used the word friendship loosely. In politics, there are no friendships but alliances.
What was the end result of his interactions with the governors? He himself laments in the letter that he lost the southwest in the 1999 elections. So, he wanted to get it back. His ego and esteem in his tribal stronghold were at stake. Members of the PDP had said that he was a failure as president because he did not enlist his region in the party’s haul.
Why did he not address the figures in the gubernatorial election that gave him the official millions of votes in Ogun State, as Osoba argued. Even today, after two decades, Ogun State has not caught up with those numbers in any election. He probably stole the votes from the future, from the children’s children when the state’s population will have swollen like Lagos. His letter should have recalled his pounded yam visit to Osoba on election day while the rigging machine was revving up votes from his PDP’s resourceful imagination.
Obasanjo also said he did not get any welcome from jail from the Afenifere and AD folks. Why should they when he reviled Abiola and worked against the June 12 mandate? While he was in his tranquil Ota retreat, his tribesmen were either dying or trying not to die. Was it not out of spite that he declared May 29 Democracy Day instead of June 12? Did he not go to South Africa to say that Abiola was not the sort of man to govern Nigeria? If the Afenifere welcomed him, would that not be hypocrisy? NigerianBusiness Coverage
The former president also said he had 21 governors and so he did not need the six states. If he did not need the six states, why did he fight for them so trenchantly, so militantly? As already shown in the book, 15 PDP governors did not want him and Governor James Ibori of Delta State led them to deny him, though unsuccessfully, from securing a second term. His APP claim is hollow. He lost major APP States like Kano. He also claimed that figures were altered in 2003. Were they altered to lose or to win? Because it was his governors and PDP that won those states except Lagos. Was it Freudian slip from baba’s pen, confessing his party altered the count? I noticed he did not want to address the president as Asiwaju. He described him as “Chief Tinubu.” The title Asiwaju must sound jarring to his imperial ears. Whether or not he likes it, Tinubu has become president. Obasanjo did not relate the sinuous agreement he had with Tinubu in 2003 and how he was outsmarted in the Lagos sweepstakes. Did his son not visit Tinubu on election night in Ikeja GRA to ensure that they wanted to work together? It was obvious he wanted to undo Tinubu, who was clever enough to anticipate wily schemes. Here is Adams Oshiomhole on his dialogue with Tinubu on why he wouldn’t work with OBJ.
“Which other Obasanjo do you know that, if this one misbehaves, I would call his uncle? Who can talk sense into him? There is none,” recalled Oshiomhole on what Tinubu told him.
He went on. “Number two, you notice his favorite uniform is camouflage. That camouflage reflects deceit. This one, he has changed the electoral timetable, using Iwu, who was INEC chairman, to reorder the timetable.’’
The only approach to Obj is war and that is what he told his fellow AD governors.