Olusegun Obasanjo’s Infinite Desire To Make And Control Any Leader After Him -By Peter Claver Oparah

Olusegun Obasanjo, the swash-buckling former president is sad; so sad that he cannot put a finger on how best to manage his elephantine emotions. Sure, his flippant emotions stand out in the many irrational acts he had been known for in all his adult years. Obasanjo is a legendary moral cretin, an ethical wreckage who makes a show of his nuisance value. Obasanjo is a quintessential adult delinquent who cares no hoot being seen in clearly pejorative lights. A man who cares no hoot about deigning Nigeria’s election as do-or-die for which he indulged in every known vile means to rig, a man that cares no hoot sleeping with his daughter-in-law, a man whom Prof. Soyinka challenged to swear he was not giving out oil blocs for sex and he dodged, a man on whose name huge cases of corruption including a $16 billion power sector heist hangs makes no pretence about his moral emptiness. This, however, is not the subject of this report on the mangled, twisted and crooked personality called Olusegun Obasanjo

Why should Obasanjo, a man on whom providence bestowed the favour of ruling Nigeria for two record times be sad at late 80s? What should make a man that lives on his arcane ability to waffle through many epochs feel sad at his ripe old age? Obasanjo is sad that in President MuhammduBuhari, his life of ego-massage and pretension to hold Nigeria in his palms is about to be nullified. He is sad that President Buhari has defied all his idiosyncratic nuances and well-known sly tactics and evaded the type of control he neighs for every Nigerian leader since he finished his reign as military Head of State and since he was chased, tail-behind-his-back, out of an innate desire to purchase a third term and eventual perpetuity in power as civilian president. Ever since his obnoxious third-term bid failed, Obasanjo has pursued the desire to be seen as the maker and unmaker of Nigeria, with an infinite desire to make and control any leader that comes after him. That arrogant insouciance is about to come to an end with the upcoming general election which incumbent President Buhari is expected to convincingly win against Obasanjo’s own fatal prediction.

Obasanjo is a sad man today because he sees the end of his annoying petulance and obtrusiveness in Nigerian affairs just at his doorsteps. Obasanjo is a sad man today because his efforts to control and dictate to Buhari has fatally crashed. In apparent anger to the frustration of his ego-trip, Obasanjo had, last year, threatened to lead a revolution, a mass action, a coalition to vote out Buhari for daring to snub him and his wily ways. So far, his threat to form and lead a revolution against Buhari has ended like spittle in the sun and this has exposed the emptiness and incapacity of Obasanjo to the outside world. Obasanjo is much sadder that three weeks to the eventful election where he threatened to lead the unseating of Buhari, his efforts have hardly ignited a spark. He is so sad that his threat seemed to have worsened his very arid political base. Simply put, Obasanjo is a general without an army. His feeling of political relevance which led him to issue such rash threat to President Buhari is a carefully nurtured balloon that has no practical unction. Obasanjo is very sad today because in a matter of weeks, and going by all practical indices, his threat to lead the removal of Buhari will end up in very thin smoke. He is so sad that his demystification is nigh. Obasanjo is so sad that his political end is around the corner, that his waterloo is within sight! What a man!

But then, given all the unmerited benevolence providence has blessed him with, Obasanjo in his late eighties should have been a jolly good fellow, putting final touches for his final journey. But hell no, Obasanjo is a restive, springy and highly volatile player who is rattled by the fear that the ground to his well-crafted political life is about to shift. Obasanjo is an agitated hustler that is about to lose his bait. His worries and agitations stem from the fact that in President Buhari, he knows he has made a terrible gamble and the stupidity of his gamble is about to crash in his face.

What better way to gauge the worried state of Obasanjo’s unsettled mind than the flippant, base and demeaning tone of his latest letter? Yes, Obasanjo fancies himself as a legendary letter writer, though a very horrible act when it comes to practising what he volubly prescribes to other leaders. He has formed the notorious habit of deigning himself as above board and subjecting other leaders to his ill-digested tirade. He had formed the habit of superciliously reading political trends and jumping into any profitable train and using that thereafter to feather his interests. When any leader is not attending to his nebulous cravings, he resorts to letter-writing, penning long and winding diatribes, couched in less-edifying, insulting and gutter verbiage and waiting to reap the aftermath. That way, he had come to invest so much on his ceaseless adventures in penning cantankerous missives to his successors and celebrating such noxious interventions as veritable game-changers in Nigerian politics.

But in President Buhari, Obasanjo showed his poor arts. He wrongly read into Buhari’s persona and his political base and what fired both his emergence and successes so far such that when he directed his usual obnoxious letter to Buhari; replete with his subtle blackmail, mischievous narratives and reading of Nigerian affairs and ranting of his readiness to lead a coalition to remove him in office, he ignorantly over reached himself and penned his last epitaph. From all seeming indices, Obasanjo had struck his nemesis in a Buhari that suffers such perennial, crooked and cunny arts as Obasanjo’s silently and calmly. Where Obasanjo hoped for a deal after his letter, he met the worst snub he had ever received since his letter-writing misadventure started. Where he hoped for s shouting match, he met stonewall ignominy nod instead came face to face with the scorching firepower of Buhari’s legions of die-hard supporters; a challenge Obasanjo was ill-equipped and not ready to take, even in his obnoxious cantankerous nature. Buhari treated Obasanjo’s with such contempt that resonated in Obasanjo’s megalomaniac crave for attention. He simply behaved as if Obasanjo never existed. 

After Buhari’s snub, the route left for Obasanjo was to plunge head-on into his formation and mobilization of an anti-Buhari coalition to kick-start his eventual voting out this February. He did that but was met with the hugest disappointment he never imagined. All his efforts to mould a formidable coalition against Buhari have so far, ended in the dust and this rather exacerbated the frustration of Obasanjo and ignited the clear warning to him that his end is near. In desperate frustration, Obasanjo executed a hara-kiri of re-joining his soulmates in PDP, a party whose membership card he tore in contempt and which he had condemned and besmirched in unprintable languages. Without shame, Obasanjo quickly embraced his former deputy, ally in byzantine corruption and age-long foe, Atiku Abubakar, an equally dented cohort who was selected as PDP presidential candidate and on whom the same Obasanjo swore just last August that God will never forgive him (Obasanjo) if he ever backs as Atiku on whom he had released so much damaging evidence of monumental corruption. In frustration, Obasanjo formed an alliance of the damned and the dirty with Atiku and PDP in a desperate effort to stave off an impending waterloo this February. That ill kite is not flying and this has left Obasanjo a terribly disturbed and haunted man.

However, with the election just three weeks away, Obasanjo is writhing in apparent fear, frustration and anger as the Buhari candidacy gathers engulfing momentum nationwide. Before Obasanjo’s korokoro eyes, all the doomsday prophecies and threats he had issued on Buhari have ended in biting failure as February election approaches faster than Obasanjo’s vile mind can comprehend. Obasanjo is watching as the Atiku candidacy, hedged under the thick veil of corruption, flounders to a certain defeat in the coming general election. Obasanjo knows that with the failure of Atiku and his soiled PDP, he is gone from Nigerian political scene as all windows for his cheeky interference with Nigerian affairs will close by that defeat! He knows that with a Buhari victory, all his cunning meddlesomeness in Nigerian statecraft will end. Obasanjo knows that his jealously-guarded aura of invincibility is about to violently rent asunder if Buhari wins in February. He knows that his messianic pretension will crash with a possible Buhari victory. Obasanjo knows that the futility of his vow to remove Buhari and re-install his cronies and hirelings in PDP spells doom for the magic wand he believes he welds over Nigerian politics. In fact, Obasanjo is deeply troubled, rankled, worried and this has made him display such fidgety and unsettled demeanour as he generously advertised in his latest letter. 

So, what better excuse can Obasanjo advance for his looming end than to forewarn of a plot to rig the election against him and his soiled PDP confederates even with the clearly obvious indications of a heavier trouncing awaiting them in February? Even without showing evidence for his convenient hoax, a troubled Obasanjo who, by all indices, is the most notorious, compulsive and corrosive election rigger Nigeria has ever had, to brush all pretensions of shame and allege that his impending end is being plotted by the Buhari regime through an unclear and unstated plot to rig the coming election? What better escape for a sly, immoral and unethical character like Obasanjo to plot for his coming waterloo than to raise the hollow allegation of rigging? So that was the mission of a sad and obviously drowning Obasanjo in his latest Nunc dimittis called letter. Rightly, the President has dismissed Obasanjo as a sick man who needs prayers to recover soon but he knows that his present sickness is leading to his political death and that no well-wishing will cure him of the self-inflicted horror he is going through now.

Peter Claver Oparah

Ikeja, Lagos.

Email: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com