POLITICALLY, it really would have been terrible for President Goodluck Jonathan had he not replied former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s letter to him. It would have been a costly mistake, and this is with due respect to the nice talk that Jonathan should have played the statesman by avoiding open exchange of words with a former President. Not this one.
The President’s formal reply was rather late. He wrote back some 11 days after the former President’s letter had seized the airwaves. However, it was better late than never!
In a BBC interview from Paris, as well as in Nairobi, Kenya and in churches, Jonathan had commented on, and continued to speak about Obasanjo’s letter dated December 2, 2013 but deliberately leaked and publicised by December 12.
But, evidently, Jonathan soon realised that he needed to do more than make comments or seek to view the issues raised as merely advisory — his mistake in regarding four previous letters from Obasanjo as “advice from a former President to a serving President.”
The point is about who Obasanjo is: A leader, who has been privileged to have more stints than all others at the highest level of administration of this country, including serving as a military Head of State and as a civilian President for two terms of eight years. He has, as they say, seen it all.
Therefore, while much of the issues he raised were matters that feature in virtually every day public discuss, his personal stature would give credibility, and, indeed, lend authenticity to the controversies.
So, it was not about style and grammar of both correspondents, which tended to enjoy great attention in public discourse of the two letters, neither was it so much that Jonathan, who promised “a breadth of fresh air” and transformation of the country while running for first term in 2011, fundamentally has managed to perform below average.
Indeed, what is at stake is not necessarily that the Jonathan presidency is so weak, so “clueless” and so devoid of effective control that some of his critics are alleging that Nigeria is being governed by five Presidents, and not one, namely, the President’s wife and First Lady, Patience, Deziani Alison-Madueke, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and Princess Stella Oduah, with Jonathan at the bottom of the ladder!
The point is that, although Jonathan could never win the argument, given the chaotic circumstances into which the country has been plunged, circumstances, which Obasanjo penned in an electrifying 18-page documentation, the President still needed to speak up if only to tell the ex-President that every dog has its day. Failure to do so would have meant his having to sink under the sledge of gossip and innuendos. And he would have had to face the consequences of naked surrender.
In a controversial fashion, Obasanjo raised issues about the country’s security situation, the economy, oil and gas sector, corruption, the state of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Jonathan’s alleged second term ambition in 2015.
But it was all so obvious that the ex-President’s principal concerns were about the last two: thus, he summarily holds Jonathan responsible for the crises, which have ripped the PDP apart and minces no words in viscerally rejecting Jonathan’s alleged bid for second term in office.
Biodun Jeyifo, a Professor of African and African-American Studies and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, reflected partly on the issue in his 44th despatch under his column, ‘Talakawa Liberation Herald’ for the December 22, 2013 edition of The Nation.
Writing with the title, “Obasanjo as Jonathan’s nemesis: moral ambiguity and cynicism in lieu of genuine reform,” the scholar observed, among others: “For me, it is remarkable that in a long, rambling letter that cried out against terrible evil things that are wrong in the Presidency and the ruling party, there is not a single suggestion, or a train of thought on how to deep meaningful reform in our country’s elite politics.
“For instance, Obasanjo never even remotely addresses the all-important question of why the ruling party is so prone to complete subordination to the will, the whims and caprices of whoever it is that occupies the seat of power at Aso Rock, so much so that, even as the President’s actions and policies are destroying the party, nothing in the institutional, collective life of the party can save it from the madness and folly of the President.”
The fundamental problem is the lopsided federal structure, which concentrates enormous powers, particularly power of the purse on the executive office. The man in power controls everything and government is everything.
Thus, unless the proposed National Conference performed considerable proper restructuring, even if the All Progressives Congress (APC), PDP’s main rival at the moment, were to take over the reins of the federal government in 2015 with the structures and institutions remaining as they are, nothing will change: power will only move from one hand, and perhaps, from one part of the country to another. The APC might even emerge worse in playing Nigeria’s peculiar brand of big-man politics — the politics of personality.
The gale of defections from the PDP to APC is an offshoot of frustration of the PDP power brokers, who saw, to their utter chagrin, that no matter how hard they tried, they could not outwit or stop Jonathan. Obasanjo’s letter also conveys this helplessness, the bitterness and vituperations that Nigerian political elite are throwing at themselves.
Jonathan/Obasanjo sour grapes
FOR some time now, the game has been on: it is the highest echelon of the leadership of the PDP, the king-makers and power merchants mounting pressure on Jonathan not to run; also called getting a northern presidential ticket on board for the PDP, while Jonathan on his part fought back in equal measure to clear the terrain of opposition to his getting the ticket.
During the 2013 Democracy Day (May 29), an occasion, which the Jonathan administration was said to “aim to bring together notable leaders of the ruling party in an amiable atmosphere,” Obasanjo instead pointedly attended the first Jigawa State Economic and Investment Summit in Dutse, the capital city of the state.
The PDP politicians did not miss the import of Obasanjo’s action and remarks at the occasion where he delivered a keynote address. He did raise the hands of the State Governor, Sule Lamido, describing him as a “repairer” and said any society desirous of change needs the type of the governor, who is on his second and last term as the state Chief Executive, to bring about that change.
The ex-President, a good storyteller, especially sob-stories, was quoted, while commenting on how policies and programmes further the growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as remarking: “With Nigeria’s situation, you all know it; if you don’t know it, you will feel it; if you don’t know it and you don’t feel it, you will hear it. And if you don’t hear it, you don’t feel it, you don’t know it, you will smell it. So, the so-called GDP growth does not translate into the welfare and well-being of the people.”
He continued: “I was asking the British High Commissioner if he came from Kano by road, he said yes. I asked about the road, he said it was good. For me, I say it as I see it. The road from Kano to Jigawa is better than the one from Lagos to Ibadan. Before, people used to be afraid of coming to Jigawa, but today, everyone wants to come. Who has brought this change? One man, and his team!
“If anyone says one man cannot bring about the difference, that person is talking rubbish. One man with his head properly screwed, one man who knows where he wants to go, with a team to help him get there, will bring about change.
“With Lamido, you know where you stand. When he says he will do, he will do. And when he says he will not do, he will not do. Let’s pray he doesn’t say he will not do, because if he says he will not do, not even I, Obasanjo, can pressurise him. And you need a man like that.
“Let me congratulate you people of Jigawa State and congratulate myself, too. Because if you say ‘Obasanjo forced this one on us,’ this one na good forcing o... You can help anybody to find a job (but) you cannot help the person to do the job. If the person is not able to do the job, hen hen...”
It was a coded endorsement! For sure, it had Abuja thoroughly miffed. Not long after, a rumour sprang that a joint ticket of Lamido for presidency with Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State as running mate was in the offing in the PDP. The rumour went viral both in the print and social media. Surely, it fired up the political wars in the PDP.
When the relentless implosions in the ruling party will be discussed, Obasanjo’s role, including his open letter to Jonathan — an affair not unlike Pontius Pilate’s sanctimonious, hand-washing display — will be counted as one of the main causes.
About eight days after publication of his controversial letter, and three days before Jonathan’s public reply, there was a newspaper report quoting the ex-President as saying on his Facebook wall, that it was time Nigerians turned on the heat in the polity so that only the best party should win in the next general elections in 2015.
“It is now time to turn up the heat. May the best party win,” he reportedly wrote.
Stripped of pretences, Obasanjo is simply saying that the electorate should vote out the PDP in 2015. In other words, although he had told leaders of the APC, who visited him at his Abeokuta, Ogun State home three weeks ago (December 21) that he is a card-carrying member of the PDP, a platform on which he ruled the country for eight years, the party obviously no longer has his support.
As he told the APC leaders, who had gone to congratulate him for his letter and also inform him that they were on a mission to “rescue” the country: “I am a card-carrying member of the PDP, but the politics I play traverses Nigeria, Africa and the World in that order. I am a democrat and one of the essential ingredients is opposition. A democracy that has no opposition built into it is not a democracy.”
Before publication of Obasanjo’s letter, the APC, registered last July, had embarked on a spree of recruiting politicians. The opposition party is welcoming and offering ready abode for politicians quitting the PDP in droves.
Meanwhile, as if a vocal section of the political elite, especially from the North, had made up its mind to “damage” whatever was left of Jonathan’s hope to put up a fair fight in his alleged second term bid, there appeared in the last weeks sustained attacks with themes like corruption and clannishness guaranteed to stir up more of already pent-up public disenchantment in which the Jonathan administration was mired. Then, Obasanjo’s open letter came into the equation.
Obasanjo’s public letter
HE accused Jonathan of clannishness; that the President was allowing himself to be possessed by his Ijaw clan. He claimed that Jonathan had confirmed to him that he would not seek re-election and asked him to toe the path of honour, more or less telling the President not to run.
“Up till two months ago, Mr. President,” wrote Obasanjo, “you told me that you have not told anybody that you will contest in 2015. I quickly pointed out to you that the signs and the measures on ground do not tally with your statement. You said the same to one other person who shared his observation with me. And only a fool will believe that statement you made to me judging by what is going on. I must say it is not ingenious. You may wish to pursue a more credible and more honourable path.
“Mr. President, whatever may be your intention or plan, I cannot comment much on the constitutional aspect of your second term or what some people called third term. But if constitutionally you are on a strong wicket if you decide, it will be fatally (and) morally flawed. As a leader, two things you must cherish and hold dear among others are trust and honour both of which are important ingredients of character.”
He went on to allege that Nigeria is bleeding; that the “haemorrhaging must be stopped before it is too late.”
Obasanjo insisted that Jonathan, and not the PDP chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, is to blame for the problems afflicting the ruling party. As he put it, “it would be unfair to continue to level full blame on the chairman for all that goes wrong with the party. The chairman is playing the tune dictated by the paymaster but the paymaster is acting for a definitive purpose for which deceit and deception seemed to be the major ingredients.”
He accused Jonathan of failing to support the party’s candidates in the governorship elections in Edo, Ondo, Lagos and Anambra States, insinuating that it was for selfish reasons.
Obasanjo did allege that the recent release of Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, the former Chief Security Officer to the late General Sani Abacha, was procured to enable him help the President. He also alleged that snipers were being trained, while 1,000 persons had been placed on a watch list.
He wrote: “Presidential assistance for a murderer to evade justice and presidential delegation to welcome him home can only be in bad taste generally but particularly to the family of his victim.
“Assisting criminals to evade justice cannot be part of the job of the Presidency. Or, as it is viewed in some quarters, is he being recruited to do for you what he had done for Abacha in the past? Hopefully, he should have learned his lesson. Let us continue to watch.”
Jonathan tackles Obasanjo
JONATHAN opted to respond to “the most serious charges.” Nevertheless, he wrote 17 pages, faulting the ex-President’s attempt to wrong-foot him on questions of personal honour and commitment to his oath of office, as well as accusations of deceit, deception, dishonesty, incompetence, clannishness, divisiveness and insincerity.
Jonathan accused Obasanjo of being uncharitable to him by applying his long years at the helm of the nation’s affairs in making insinuations, saying, “you have done me grave injustice.”
He then proceeded to reply point by point Obasanjo’s claims on insecurity, carrot and stick approach to tackling terrorism, political watch list, training a hit squad, assisting murderers and sending a presidential delegation to welcome a murderer.
Jonathan took Obasanjo on in a lengthy rebuttal on charges of corruption and the crises in the ruling PDP.
“You raised concerns about the security situation in the country,” wrote Jonathan. “My Administration is working assiduously to overcome current national security challenges, the seeds of which were sown under previous administrations. There have been some setbacks; but certainly there have also been great successes in our efforts to overcome terrorism and insurgency.
“Those who continue to down-play our successes in this regard, amongst whom you must now be numbered, appear to have conveniently forgotten the depths to which security in our country had plunged before now.
“At a stage, almost the entire North-East of Nigeria was under siege by insurgents. Bombings of churches and public buildings in the North and the federal capital became an almost weekly occurrence. Our entire national security apparatus seemed nonplussed and unable to come to grips with the new threat posed by the berthing of terrorism on our shores.
“But my administration has since brought that very unacceptable situation under significant control. We have overhauled our entire national security architecture, improved intelligence gathering, training, funding, logistical support to our armed forces and security agencies, and security collaboration with friendly countries with very visible and positive results.”
Jonathan, who, in the past, had pooh-poohed Obasanjo for hitting hard at Odi in Bayelsa State, to curb militancy in the Niger Delta, repeated his position that rather than solve militancy, the Army invasion of the community escalated the problem.
The President described the allegation of training snipers to assassinate political opponents as “particularly incomprehensible to me,” insisting that since starting his political career as a Deputy Governor in Bayelsa State, “I have never been associated with any form of political violence.”
He added: “I have been a President for over three years now, with a lot of challenges and opposition mainly from the high and mighty. There have certainly been cases of political assassination since the advent of our Fourth Republic, but as you well know, none of them occurred under my leadership.” (Meaning that such reported cases of political assassinations that were, and still remain unresolved occurred under Obasanjo’s watch as President between 1999 and 2007.)
“Regarding the over one thousand people you say are on a political watch list, I urge you to kindly tell Nigerians who they are and what agencies of government are ‘watching’ them.
“Your allegation that I am using security operatives to harass people is also baseless. Nigerians are waiting for your evidence of proof. That was an accusation made against previous administrations, including yours, but it is certainly not my style and will never be.
“I also find it difficult to believe that you will accuse me of assisting murderers, or assigning a presidential delegation to welcome a murderer. This is a most unconscionable and untrue allegation.”
Jonathan said corruption has been with the country for many years such that famous musicians, the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and Sunny Okosuns sang about it during Obasanjo’s first stint as Head of State.
“The seed of corruption in this country was planted a long time age, but we are doing all that we can to drastically reduce its debilitating effects on national development and progress. I have been strengthening the institutions established to fight corruption.
“I will not shield any government official or private individual involved in corruption, but I must follow due process in all I do. And whenever clear cases of corruption or fraud are established, my administration has always taken prompt action in keeping with the dictates of extant laws and procedures.
“You cannot claim to be unaware of the fact that, several highly-placed persons in our country, including some sons of some of our party leaders, are currently facing trial for their involvement in the celebrated subsidy scam affair.”
Jonathan insisted that Obasanjo was unfair for holding him solely responsibility for what he calls “ongoing intrigues and tensions” in the PDP.
“Baba, let us all be truthful…” wrote Jonathan. “At the heart of all the current troubles in our party and the larger polity is the unbridled jostling and positioning for personal or group advantage ahead of the 2015 general elections. The bitterness, anger, mistrust, fear and deep suspicion” you wrote about all flow from this singular factor.
“It is indeed very unfortunate that the seeming crisis in the party was instigated by a few senior members of the party, including you. But, as leader of the party, I will continue to do my best to unite it so that we can move forward with strength and unity of purpose.”
In a sense, the exchange is some kind of fire for fire. But for Jonathan, it is important that he realises that before 2015, he could still raise the face of his government: Let there be improved power supply; let nothing be done to frustrate the proposed National Conference in carrying out restructuring of the federation.
Maybe, just maybe, the country could then be talking differently.
In a BBC interview from Paris, as well as in Nairobi, Kenya and in churches, Jonathan had commented on, and continued to speak about Obasanjo’s letter dated December 2, 2013 but deliberately leaked and publicised by December 12. But, evidently, Jonathan soon realised that he needed to do more than make comments or seek to view the issues raised as merely…
The point is that, although Jonathan could never win the argument, given the chaotic circumstances into which the country has been plunged, circumstances, which Obasanjo penned in an electrifying 18-page documentation, the President still needed to speak up if only to tell the ex-President that every dog has its day. Failure to do so would have meant his having to sink under the sledge of gossip and innuendos. And he would have had to face the consequences of naked surrender.
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