Tinubu replies Obasanjo’s letter to Buhari (Full text)

CHIEF OBASANJO – AT WAR AGAINST HIS OWN DEEDS – By Bola
Tinubu

Former President Obasanjo is many things to many people; but he
is all things unto himself. His recent contribution to our
political discourse wherein he alleges plots to steer the coming
elections shows he benefits from an exceedingly faulty memory, is
purely shameless or has a most wicked sense of humor. Perhaps all
three are facets of his makeup and were equally on display in his
latest prosaic display.

The crux of his long tirade was the allegation that INEC is
poised to cook the election results. Chief Obasanjo should not get
his dander up and waste good ink for nothing. This election will be
a free and open exercise of the people’s right to choose their
leaders.

Obasanjo makes fiery allegations against this right but offers
no corroborating evidence; he presents only reams of words. This is
because Obasanjo is projecting onto the APC the misconduct he would
wrought if still in power. Yet, the ways of Obasanjo are not those
of the APC. And this difference has meant the better for
Nigeria.

Moreover, Chief Obasanjo should be the last to complain about
election rigging. His administration was an unalloyed miscarriage
of justice and of the best aspirations of the Nigerian people. We
all know he was not elected in 1999. He was handed Nigeria on a
silver platter; perhaps because Nigeria was so easily given that he
went about treating the nation as if it was a less than precious
thing; he thought it was a cheap give-away not a privilege to
govern this nation. This man should have positioned himself to be
the father of the nation.

All the goodwill that could be granted a political figure was
bestowed on him. The global economy was such that it fueled our
growth. Everyone wanted Nigeria to succeed after emerging from
years of noxious military rule.

Despite the flawed exercise that rendered him president, we all
bit our tongues in hope that he would say and do the right things
that would move Nigeria forward. Instead of being a unifying figure
as Commander-in-chief, he lowered himself to being a divisive,
vindictive conniver. There was no table which he neared that he did
not upset and overturn.

There was no one who came into his company for any period of
time with whom he did not fall out if he expresses a thought
contrary to one of his. He tried to convert our young democracy
into a one party state. His PDP boasted that they would rule for 60
uninterrupted years. Never did they boast that they would govern us
well during even one year of the sixty. He could have placed the
economy on the path to durable growth and shared prosperity through
diversification, industrialization and creation of a social safety
net for the poor.

Instead, he handed the economy over to a tight group of cronies,
turning what should be a modern economy into a version of the
mammoth trading companies that dominated the 17th and 18th century.
The Transcorp conglomerate was intended to be a throwback to
monopolistic enterprises such as the East Indian Company wherein a
select handful would control the national economy’s strategic
heights. We hoped that Obasanjo would personify statesmanship, thus
showing the way to a more benign political culture. Instead, he
bickered and feuded with his vice president and mostly anyone who
dared remind him that he was human and thus infallible. READ ALSO:
Points for concern and action – Obasanjo’s full statement about
current state of the nation Given the vast margin between the good
he could have achieved and the nebulous feats that comprise his
true record, Chief Obasanjo is the person most responsible for the
flaws in the Nigerian political economy since 1999. His ego is as
expansive as the firmament but his good deeds would fit into a
modest sachet with ample room to spare. The worst of Obasanjo’s
record, I have yet to describe.

When it comes to elections, he has been a rigger without peer.
There is no election which occurred under Obasanjo’s watch or in
which he participated that did not involve cheating on his part.
Even the late President Umaru Musa Yar ‘Adua admitted he was the
beneficiary of a flawed election engineered by none other than
today’s vociferous complainant. For Obasanjo to lament over
electoral malpractice is tantamount to the ocean complaining that a
few raindrops are causing it to get wet. In his writing, Obasanjo
alleges the Osun election indicates rigging will take place in the
coming contests. Let’s go straight to the truth, Obasanjo has no
grievance with the process. His personal history suggests fair
process is the least of his concerns.

What knocks Obasanjo off kilter is that he could not dictate the
result in Osun. He told those in the PDP that he held sway in Osun
and throughout the Southwest. They believed him. He led them to
defeat notwithstanding the almost impossible voter turnout in PDP
strongholds in that state. Obasanjo can only win an election when
has the final say over the final vote tally. Otherwise, he is a
troubled man.

In an attempt to relieve his trouble, Chief Obasanjo makes
reference to a joke about INEC. He says, “The INEC was asked if the
Commission was ready for the election and if it expects the
election to be free, fair and credible. The INEC man is reported as
saying in response, ‘we are ready with everything including the
results.’” The joke has a touch of humor; we are glad that Obasanjo
is not completely devoid of this most human of traits.

However, he makes a telling omission by failing to give you the
vintage of this bit of sarcasm. The jest was not born last week.
It’s vintage is circa 2003- a time when a certain President
Obasanjo rode roughshod over INEC. He would summon the nervous INEC
chairman to the Villa, proceeding to hector the man until he gave
way to Obasanjo’s demands.

At Obasanjo’s urging, INEC improperly published fake election
results on the gubernatorial race in Lagos. Not until a public
outcry did INEC back away from rigging Lagos. A similar attempt was
made in Lagos in 2007. In essence, for Obasanjo to laugh at this
joke means he has belatedly developed the ability to laugh at
himself.

If Obasanjo was so committed to free elections, how could he
countenance Atiku’s recent boast of single-handedly rigging
elections in the Southwest. Atiku claimed that he took all states
for the PDP but left Lagos alone due to some misguided affinity for
me.

By this statement, Atiku publicly admitted to rigged elections
in the SW. Beyond resort to wholesale rigging, Atiku could never
deign to be more popular and potent in the Southwest than the
panoply of good and decent leaders that guided the defunct AC.
Moreover, I can assure you that we did not need Atiku’s false
beneficence to win the elections in Lagos. The people voted for us
and their votes countered the ill-designs Obasanjo and Atiku set in
motion.

Thus, if Obasanjo cannot chastise Atiku for publicly boasting
that he rigged elections, then Obasanjo’s display of righteous
indignation is but a magician’s trick. His fine words and
sentiments come a dozen years too late. These noble things would
have greater effect had he placed them into practice when he was at
the helm of affairs. At that time, he was powerful so he did as he
might. Now that he lacks power, he has taken to preach that which
he never did.

In his commentary, he mentions that INEC has a record of past
rigging. I wonder if he understands the admission he makes. No
other president has exercised such tight control over INEC for as
many years as Obasanjo. No president has had the domineering
relationship with INEC that Obasanjo enjoyed. If there are reports
of past INEC rigging, those reports are of Obasanjo’s making. It is
the irony of ironies for Obasanjo to complain of the fruit on the
table when his was the hand that planted the tree. Chief Obasanjo
tries to further confuse matters by pointing to the case of the
CJN’s assets declaration as evidence of future vote-rigging via
tampering with the judiciary.

Again, Obasanjo goes into a personality shift. For years,
Obasanjo has boasted of himself as our corruption fighter
nonpareil. The very aim of this current letter is to attack
imagined INEC malfeasance. Yet, with regard to the CJN, he blithely
ignores the large cache of dollars in the CJN’s account and the
millions of dollars that passed through the accounts. Obasanjo
seems unbothered by the unexplained presence of such sums.

Perhaps Obasanjo’s nonchalance regarding the money is that he
expected the funds there because he knows both the origin and
reasons for the trove. Chief Obasanjo sinks so low as to suggest
that the VP, during the exercise of his official duties, was taking
the PVC numbers of market women and traders. This statement reveals
the bilious nature of the man. Obasanjo even quotes the notorious
Bode George in claiming that the VP was “gutting our collective
treasury” by giving loans of N10,000 to market women under the
administration’s empowerment programs. What? Giving money to poor
people to enhance their lives and escape the maw of poverty is, by
PDP metrics, gutting the collective treasury. If helping the poor
is gutting the treasury, Atiku’s privatizing large chunks of the
economy into his own pocket must have been seen by the PDP as a
vital public service. Jonathan and his Petroleum Minister’s
siphoning government coffers of several billion dollars to enrich
the already-rich must have been viewed by the PDP as the epitome of
a social safety net.

Obasanjo’s and the PDP’s disdain for the common person could not
be clearer. When he was president, the economy was on an easy
sledding due to positive global trends. Obasanjo did not raise a
finger to do anything for the poor. He and Atiku were champions of
trickle-down economics. If anything good trickled down to the poor
it was by accident. Obasanjo left the poor unattended because he
cared nothing for them. Poverty increased under his cold
indifference. Not one meaningful social program was established
during his watch. The banking and pension deregulation he brought
were geared to profit the wealthy CEO’s and managers of these
financial entities. The malpractices attendant to these
deregulation fiascos extinguished the savings of millions of
Nigerians. In reliance on these artifices of Obasanjo and his ilk,
many Nigerians were thrust down the lower rungs of the poverty they
so desperately sought to avoid.

Obasanjo’s allies gobbled the savings of the poor and still
feast on them to this day. Chief Obasanjo is one of the last people
to preach to anyone about using public funds to care for the poor.
He had the gall to fret that funds should not be given to the urban
poor because they are not poor enough. But his grouse does not show
any defect in the administration’s program. His complaint shows the
defect in Obasanjo’s humanity or lack of it.

To complain that some people are not poor enough for his liking
is to reveal that seeing human suffering does not motivate him to
cure it. He would rather that people suffer it the more. Your
unease and distress becomes his entertainment or at least evidence
he is superior to the common man. Watching a laborer struggle
against penury is no more than a spectator sport for Obasanjo. The
most fantastic of all his claims is that this administration has
returned Nigeria to the days of Abacha. If this were true, the
press would be constantly closed.

Obasanjo would be constricted in writing such letters. Elections
would not be upon us. Atiku would not be able to freely campaign
and the diversity of opinion in the public space would be
suppressed. For Obasanjo to utter such an outrage is that he hopes
lighting strikes twice. He was ushered into office after Abacha’s
demise. He thinks if he can invoke Abacha’s name, the same thing
will happen again.

By hook, crook or utter fantasy, Obasanjo seeks to return to Aso
Villa, not as an irritating, importuning guest but as a long-term
resident. He wants to be back in control. If he cannot be
president, then the president better carve from his office a
special room for Obasanjo. Obasanjo thinks he is more than the
greatest Nigerian. He thinks himself greater than Nigeria itself.
Unless he is allowed to lead the procession, he will groan, grouse
and grit.

However, neither President Buhari nor the progressive APC have
much use for his reactionary policies and his megalomaniac ways.
Thus, we shall be forced to endure more of his letters. But
enduring such missives is vastly superior and small price to pay
for not having to endure a repeat of his unenlightened
misgovernance.