Obasanjo's Depraved Conscience, Goodluck Nigeria!

By Osondu Ahirika 

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo a.k.a OBJ, is both a tragic and a comic figure, Nigerians are condemned to endure. Such curious blend of phlegmatic melancholy couldn't trouble a man much more than it has OBJ.
It amuses me that, many Nigerians still don't comprehend OBJ's greatest obsession: that of being seen as the CONSCIENCE of the Nation. 

Failing to get a greedily sought third term at the end of his tenure in 2011, OBJ who grudgingly ingratiates himself as the only man worthy to lead Nigeria devised a Plan B. To (pl)ease him out, stakeholders agreed to amend the Peoples Democratic Party Constitution, paving way to make him Life Chairman of the Party’s Board of Trustees. In his warped logic, the amendment provided that he will serve as the CONSCIENCE OF THE PDP. 
In exercise of that bogus Office, OBJ felt he could throw his irritable weight about as the moral ombudsman of leaders in the nation. That isn't a bad idea, as every nation needs a conscience and men who serve as the compass to measure its morality. The stink is that, OBJ is the very antithesis of that prudent idea. Truth is, OBJ that we have come to know at his best flaunts a DEPRAVED CONSCIENCE, if at all he still has one.
A synopsis of the type of Conscience OBJ has troubled this nation which can be traced to his memoirs, books and speeches. Overly concerned with erecting a cult-like image or demi-god status for himself, OBJ has remorselessly and ruthlessly deployed his razor-sharp tongue to tear down every other rival in the evolution of our nation’s pantheon of leaders.
Back in 1979, as an exiting Military Head of State, OBJ bequeathed the nation a flawed General Elections. Alhaji Shehu Shagari emerged President in an election many believed Chief Obafemi Awolowo, his(OBJ's) townsman won. A pugnacious OBJ shouted down at the nation: THE BEST CANDIDATE MUST NOT NECCESSARILY WIN AN ELECTION, he said. That nailed it for Pa. Awo. It did not matter what the rest of the nation thought.
It still shocks me that, in reaction to the subsequent criticism of the Nigeria Press against his shoddy administration and disengagement from power, OBJ who responded by posting the infamous, NO DOGS AND JOURNALISTS WANTED HERE on his Otta Farm House gate, still enjoys the spotlight of the people he so despised and ranked as dogs.
The man who will not tolerate any correction soon tackled Shagari with his acerbic tongue when they fell out. Though he didn't leave any sound bite against Shagari, his eventual ouster by Gen. Muhammadu Buhari made OBJ wear a wry smile. Buhari didn't last long enough for OBJ's famous tirades to rain, but Gen. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida(IBB) who kicked Buhari out got a full dose.




In summation of IBB's Structural adjustment programmes and general reforms, OBJ crooned that, THE BABANGIDA ADMINISTRATION LACKS A HUMAN FACE. 
Following IBB's transition programme, former Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon declared to run for President. OBJ with his uncouth language dismissed Gowon by asking, "WHAT DID GOWON FORGET AT DODAN BARRACKS?" It was a mockery that snuffed life out of that dream and ridiculed Gowon to submission.

Then came the June 12 Presidential Elections still adjudged Nigeria's best Elections ever. His kinsman, Chief M.K.O Abiola was believed to have won the election which IBB annulled. When Nigerians were laying down their lives, hounded into jail and some to exile fighting to revalidate the election, OBJ took the wind from our sail with his damning verdict to the international community: ABIOLA IS NOT THE MESSAIH WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR.
That became a cheeky icing on the cake of anti-June 12 elements and buried the struggle. With the untidy exit of IBB, Shonekan's interim government ushered in Gen. Sani Abacha. In Abacha, OBJ met his waterloo. Before he could spin his careless talk, he was gagged and put in jail. Nigerians in pity rallied around their chatterbox and called for his freedom.
Out of jail on the demise of Abiola and Abacha, OBJ told us he is born-again. A rebirth we all wished were real and that the Leopard has eventually changed its spots. What he couldn't do to the Abacha regime when he was in gulag and the former alive, he found his voice to discharge after his prison experience. A book, THIS ANIMAL CALLED MAN, was how he abridged the brutal dictator called Abacha's tenure.
He preached long sermons in that book on humanism which his eight year tenure as civilian President revealed he hardly possessed. He leveled Odi, and introduced state terrorism to settle scores with perceived or real political opponents including governors. EFFC was his Gestapo outfit to harass and intimidate and cow opponents in the guise of fighting corruption.  We were bewildered, a man who was brought from the brink could now breathe down at us all and not blink.
At Jos, when he went to parley with religious leaders over the crisis in the state, he made another defiant lambast. Berating the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Chairman of Plateau state, Rev Yakubu Pam, Obasanjo snarled, "Mr Chairman of CAN, you are talking absolute nonsense and don't provoke me," And the supposedly born-again OBJ added, "...CAN my foot!" 
His third term gambit and scandalous attempt to bribe the National Assembly miscarried like a bad pregnancy. OBJ imposed ailing President Umaru Yar'adua on the nation with the Governor Goodluck Jonathan for a running mate. He tagged that election A DO-OR-DIE AFFAIR. He meant it. He had to foist Yar'adua on the nation at all cost and went for broke. When rumour spread that his protégé was gravely sick, he put a call at a campaign venue and humoured us all with the question, "UMORU', THEY SAY YOU ARE DEAD, ARE YOU DEAD?" Soon, the truth caught up with us. President Yar'adua was incapacitated leaving Nigeria in a precarious power vacuum and ensuing struggle. OBJ played smart and distanced himself from Yar'adua with whom he had parted ways. "If you take up an assignment, a job, elected, appointed; whatever it is, and then your health starts to fail and you will not be able to deliver to satisfy yourself and to satisfy the people you are supposed to serve, then there is a path of honor and the path of morality," Obasanjo lashed out at the dying man.
When his erstwhile Vice President, Atiku Abubakar was adopted as the sole candidate of the North for the 2011 Presidential elections, OBJ took a scoffing swipe at him, I JUST DEY LAUGH, in response to Newsmen seeking his view on the development. 
In came President Goodluck Jonathan and their cold war and OBJ's endless diatribes against Mr President are too current to bore you with a repeat.
OBJ's brash bid to make himself a folk hero of Nigeria's history is immodestly rendered in his books, as the titles, MY COMMAND, NOT MY WILL, MY WATCH,  AFRICA THROUGH THE EYES OF A PATRIOT, I SEE HOPE, STANDING TALL etc, amplify his unapologetic and egocentric leaning. 
Ironically, of all OBJ's posturing as a modern day puritanist and moral crusader, he has maintained an undignified silence to the accusation of infidelity preferred against him by his first son, Dr Gbenga Obasanjo.  Gbenga alleged that, OBJ sleeps with his wife and demanded a DNA test to ascertain the true father of his purported kids. Even his eldest daughter, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo has disowned him. She is the one we learn from the standard of OBJ's CONSCIENCE. MY FATHER IS A LIAR, MANIPULATOR AND HYPOCRITE, Iyabo attested to the world in an open and widely circulated letter. OBJ's lame reaction when confronted by airport correspondents was to say, "I CANNOT BE EMBARASSED" OBJ's conscience is pathetically whimsical and fed by self interest.
If you seek my opinion, this man should simply be ignored. He has ingloriously left the PDP where he blindly thought he could be PRESIDENT FOR LIFE. What is left is for us to help him retire fully to the coven of his luxury Hilltop Mansion while we regain our sanity, serially raped and so cruelly ravaged by his sickening brickbats. His conscience is a sore-infested one, even truth can't heal its level of depravity. Finally, let me concur with PDP, Obasanjo is not God! He is not even god of Owu, much less that of Nigeria.
As he steps aside from the overbearing influence he pretends to wield over PDP, we can safely wish all Nigerians GOODLUCK in 2015.