OBJ’s Image Laundering Project: Another View

By Egbuns Kemakola

In spite of his self-indulgence, I don’t think that the verdict of history would be kind on OBJ. But it is desirable that he be forgiven for his egregious misdeeds for the reason of the attributes of courage, wisdom and grace that he is endowed with. OBJ remains, in my view, the luckiest Nigerian soldier, dead or alive. Thrice he walked through the valley of the shadow of death and survived – first, as a suspected accomplice in the Major Nzeogwu putsch; second as a survivor of Lt. Col. Dimka’s failed coup that swept off General Murtala Mohammed; and thirdly, as a gratuitous victim of the murderous dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. But OBJ did not, in my view, leverage on the smiles of fortune and grace of providence to pay back to Nigerian humanity the bounties and magnanimity that Nature bestowed on and availed him with.

In his first coming, OBJ virtually destroyed the Nigerian Civil Service, the untainted legacy bequeathed to independent Nigeria by the colonial masters. And this was for reasons that were personal to him and General Muhammed in their careers as Federal Commissioners and not, necessarily, national interest. In the political context, OBJ declared that the best may not always win in an election. As if this was a prelude to the embedded landmine in his transition programme, he handed over political power amidst a raging controversy about two-thirds of 19 states in Nigeria.

In his second coming, OBJ seemed to have reproached himself and regretted whatever little desirables he achieved in his first coming – OFN, low-cost government, road networks, dynamic foreign policy, etc. He proceeded, therefore, to demolish these and irredeemably desecrated democracy through which he was railroaded from prison to political power. OBJ saw the legislature and judiciary as two other battalions of a military division, with himself as General Officer Commanding, GOC. He acquired the PDP and made it an appendage of his flowing agbada, leaving Nigeria virtually in shambles.

He formalised in Nigeria the paradigm of “do-or-die” politics. OBJ afflicted Nigeria’s democracy with the command instincts of the military. Rather than do a Mandela, he chose to do a Mobutu. He appropriated to himself the status of an avatar that came down to do Nigeria a privileged service. While other political parties foraged for funds, OBJ and his PDP scooped, scurrilously and shamelessly, from the Petroleum Development Trust Fund, PDTF.

In Nigeria, the construction of a house is usually started, metaphorically, from the roof and finished with the casting of the foundation! This was what OBJ’s “electoral victory” in 1999 meant as he was rejected by his own people, his immediate constituency.

In the short term, what OBJ is in the eye of history shall depend on who writes it. But is OBJ intelligent? Was he a presidential material? My answers are strongly in the affirmative.

In the long term, OBJ in the eye of history shall be decided by time and written by later generations after the garnishing, embellishments and sentiments must have atrophied. Until then, it seems we would have to live with OBJ’s dystopic therapy for Nigeria’s inextricable and intractable stasis.

•Kemakola wrote this article for TheNEWS magazine.