*Photo Professor Kehinde Yusuf*
On 12 March, 2024, Sam Omatseye, Chair of the Editorial Board of The Nation, launched, in Abuja, a book titled Beating All Odds: Diaries and Essays on How Bola Tinubu Became President. On 19 October, 2024, Omatseye delivered an address at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, on the topic “Redemption or Perdition, what now for Tinubu reforms.”
Omatseye stated: “Before I address whether the reforms of President Tinubu will lead to perdition or redemption, it is important to understand the context of how he defeated his two major opponents. The two other presidential candidates were Abubakar Atiku and, of course, Peter Obi. Atiku was the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Obi, as I stated earlier, held the banner of the Labour Party. Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes, Atiku polled 6,984,520 votes while Obi had 6,101,533 votes. It is obvious that those who did not want Tinubu as president were more than those who wanted him to lead the country. If we combined the votes of the Labour Party and the PDP, they amounted to about 13 million votes compared to Tinubu’s eight million. If we consider the bitterness of the polls, especially the religious ferment and ethnic odium, it is understandable why the majority of the country still aches and swears.”
He further said: “Immediately the electoral chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, announced the results, both men rejected them and proceeded to challenge the verdict in court. During the campaigns, they accused him as a thief, without evidence; as a convicted drug baron, even after the United States government through its embassy had cleared him; of forged certificate as a student of Chicago State University, even though the university confirmed he was a student. Yet, when Atiku’s school discrepancies were released, there was little bubble, or when Obi was revealed to have used his own late brother’s certificate, there was silence. In fact, when I recently discussed this with an Obidient – that is, what the Obi followers call themselves – the fellow said he had never heard such a thing.”
In the address, Omatseye further declared: “While they say Tinubu stole state funds, Obi’s followers were not willing to address what their man had publicly acknowledged: that he (Obi) had invested state funds in a family business when he was a governor of Anambra State and that he maintained an off-shore account against the law when he governed Anambra State. Atiku himself had also been accused of selling off public companies at giveaway prices and had fattened on public funds. Few were willing to interrogate them. But Tinubu became the butt of a barrage of umbrage. I am not here to say he is innocent of anything, but just to chart the architecture of rage that pervaded the man’s rise to power.”
And the rage, by the way, also had its beginnings in the heinous attack Tinubu was subjected to even within his own party, leading to the primaries. Omatseye observed as follows in his column in The Nation on 11 March, 2024: “I knew the president – Muhammadu Buhari – did not want him. The peacocks and vampires around him did not want him. Some stakeholders in the country did not only resent him, they were afraid of him. The plot thickened quickly. Conspiracies festered in sewers and in the open. … At every turn, they stumbled into crosswinds. Their own weapon turned their own folly.”
Sam Omatseye also noted in the Cambridge lecture: “In spite of all these headwinds, Tinubu triumphed. Hence, I called the book, Beating all odds. As the two opponents challenged the polls in court, their supporters stoked the flames of subversion. Some of their followers even asked the army to overthrow democracy. It has been a virtual bedlam in the country since he took over office as president. More than half of the country did not accept him as their leader, and whatever he did, good or bad was bad.”
In addition, Omatseye posited: “In his inaugural address, his quote, “subsidy is gone,” has been a refrain of rebellion. He might have believed, perhaps naively, that since everyone agreed that the regime of arbitrage and corruption known as subsidy of oil was bad, it would attract universal acceptance once he announced its history. But when the consequences began to hit with core inflation rising like a hawk, they began to accuse him of bad faith, ineptitude and insensitivity. The cost of food, transportation and fuel staggered the market and the poor.”
It is in the context of this fouled social atmosphere that, on 15 November, 2024, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, possibly the most visceral of President Tinubu’s traducers, delivered a lecture at the Chinua Achebe Leadership in Africa Forum. He opened the Keynote Speech, titled “Leadership failure and state capture in Nigeria,” as follows: “Without being immodest, I will begin by saying that it is appropriate that I was invited to deliver the keynote address at a gathering in honour of the late Professor Chinua Achebe. Not just because I have been Head of State and President of Nigeria on two different periods of our beloved nation’s history – most will agree fairly successfully – but because I have known the man, his work, and his values for as long as our nation has been in existence. He was a great and distinguished Nigerian.”
He continued: “I invoke jest to parlay into a much darker topic for which we are gathered here to address: The failure of governance in Nigeria and the near collapse of our Nation State.” Furthermore, he said: “The 2023 elections in Nigeria were ‘a travesty’ by all rational measures. Following that problem prone exercise, electoral system reform is now among the top targets for change in Nigeria.” In addition, he talked about “politicians corruptly getting themselves declared as winner in an election where votes do not matter and asking winner declared loser to go to court where justice cannot be assured is the easiest and best way to kill electoral democracy.” Moreover, he said: “What is happening in Nigeria – right before our eyes – is state capture: The purchase of national assets by political elites – and their family members – at bargain prices, the allocation of national resources – minerals, land, and even human resources – to local, regional, and international actors. It must be prohibited and prevented through local and international laws.” He then went on and on in what looked like a hatchet job for whoever.
Walking in the footsteps of Obasanjo, singer Davido dissuaded foreigners who wished to relocate to Nigeria to bury the thought because, according to him, the country’s economy was in shambles. To this, Reno Omokri observed, in a Facebook post on 25 November, 2024: “Davido’s father recently testified of his breakthrough in his investments in Nigeria in multiple fields. Mr. Adedeji Adeleke gave a good report on how his $2 billion power plant in Nigeria is thriving and has blossomed to the point where he generates 15% of Nigeria’s electricity. May God bless him for that testimony, which is at variance [with] and contradicts what his son, Davido, said to the world about Nigeria’s economy being in shambles.”
On 30 June, 2008, in a speech titled, “Barrack Obama: Speech on Patriotism,” former President Obama said: “I learned that what makes America great has never been its perfection but the belief that it can be made better. … Of course, precisely because America isn’t perfect, precisely because our ideals constantly demand more from us, patriotism can never be defined as loyalty to any particular leader or government or policy. As Mark Twain, that greatest of American satirists and proud son of Missouri once wrote, ‘Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.’ … Our greatest leaders have always … defined patriotism with an eye towards posterity. George Washington is rightly revered for his leadership of the Continental Army, but one of his greatest acts of patriotism was his insistence on stepping down after two terms, thereby setting a pattern for those that would follow reminding future presidents that this is a government of and by and for the people.”
But it’s not always that Obasanjo has had Davido’s kind of company. He had the opposite of that in former American President Jimmy Carter. When America was in an energy crisis that led to the kind of problems Nigeria is facing today, Jimmy Carter, who was Obasanjo’s friend, sought to inspire Americans to keep the nation afloat as follows: “Whenever you have a chance, say something good about your country.” Implicit in this 2008 entreaty is the Shakespearean admonition: “Discretion is the better part of valour.”
Obasanjo’s attack on specific individuals, institutions and even the country as a whole in his Yale University lecture has elicited a torrent of castigation, and it’s not certain whether the former President anticipated the immensity and depth of the backlash. Olakunle Abimbola of The Nation remarked: “It’s clear: despite his constant huffing and puffing; and empty pontifications, Obasanjo has little sense of fairness; talk less of justice. But God is great! As he opens his mouth to judge others, he condemns himself even more!” Even the reticent Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, in an interview on Channels Television, had remarked, in response to Obasanjo’s 1 January, 2023 self-serving message: “With all due respect to all those involved, don’t let us spend this programme on General Obasanjo’s letter or ideas and what have you, because some of us believe he also is part of the foundation of the problems that we have in this country.”
Former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, also profoundly asserted in a 1 January, 2001 interview: “Well, no country is ever sort of completely fulfilled. The only fulfilled countries are those that are not going forward. Every country is a nation in transition, it’s got a future.” In other words, as a writer on Facebook, Abiodun Ishola Ladepo, noted and counseled, on 29 November, 2024, “No place on earth is Utopia. Utopia is a phantom state. … Don’t be like that ignorant singer parroting denigrating propaganda about Nigeria.”
These views cohere with the optimistic disposition of Sam Omatseye, and he observed that fundamental changes were taking place which presage a brighter future for the country. The array of optimististic views also disavow Obasanjo’s doomsday predilection. Indicating how deep his phobia for Tinubu was, Obasanjo lapsed into innuendo: “My military training and experience taught me that what you capture, you tend to hold under your sole control for as long as you can hold it. That is the case of one governor of a state who still holds the state captive in his pocket 25 years after being the governor of the state. That, certainly, is no mean feat.
