Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s former president, a retired soldier, an international statesman, and always a gadfly, was on a familiar terrain recently in far-away Yale University, USA, where he delivered a keynote speech at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum on the theme, “Leadership Failure and State Capture in Nigeria.” It was a 25-minute video-recorded message from the Democratic Republic of Congo where he had gone for another assignment.
As usual, he stirred up the hornet’s nests. Over the years, OBJ has acquired a reputation, or if you like, (notoriety) for writing scurrilous letters to the occupants of Aso Villa. He also deploys public podiums to hold successive presidents’ feet in the fire. Little did Nigerians know that when he was critiquing IBB’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in the 1980s by calling for a ‘human face’ implementation of the policy, it was just a learning curve in the trajectory cut out for him. Today, he has seen it all and has gone full blast with no indication of letting up.
OBJ made hard-hitting pontifications and described Nigeria as a failing state under the administrations of former President Buhari and the incumbent President Tinubu, whom he described as ‘Baba-Go-Slow and Emilokan’ respectively. He was unsparing in his criticism. As a street sense man, OBJ exploited the prevailing discontent in the land and heaped the blames on the immediate past and the present federal government.
In tandem with Newton’s Third Law which states that “for every action (force) in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction”, Obasanjo’s acerbic commentary infuriated President Tinubu’s government. Bayo Onanuga, one of the spokespersons of the presidency, reeled out the ‘sins’ of Obasanjo years in government and questioned his moral authority to upbraid those whom, according to him, are making efforts to clean out the Augean stables.
Given the toxicity and divisive propaganda in virtual and media spaces, it is safer to fact-check issues and put them in perspective for a nation with unending stories of woes and endemic culture of collective amnesia. The first point raised by OBJ was the issue of leadership failure, and quoted copiously from Achebe’s slim book: ’The Trouble with Nigeria.’ One of the lines says: “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership…” So, from OBJ and Onanuga’s hot exchanges, there is an inadvertent admission that leadership failure is at the root of Nigerian development crisis. The difference from the two sides, however, borders on the details of good governance gaps and the specific tenures and years they happened. It was a scenario of pointing at the speck in your brother’s eye without first removing the plank out of your own eye.
Another point that is indisputable is the issue of ‘state capture’ which has been authoritatively defined as “a situation where powerful individuals, companies, or groups within or outside a country use corruption to shape a nation’s policies, legal environment and economy to benefit their own private interests.” OBJ was right to denote it as a humongous clog in the wheel of national progress. But, in fairness, ‘state capture’ did not start from the present administration. It has been a recurring decimal with more audacity and impunity as new sets of leaders emerge at the national, state, and institutional levels. The mentality has permeated all facets of our national life: politics, economy, civil/public service, academia, security/intelligence community, regulatory bodies, strategic institutions of national values and stability, the media, and very unfortunately, the judiciary. Even a good number of the masses would blame any of their own, or label him ‘weak’ if he fails to exploit ‘state capture’ to their advantages, including during elections, legal tussles, and general allocation of values from the government. So, ‘state capture’ has demand and supply sides to it.
Although OBJ tries to present a messianic disposition, history and antecedents would not always absolve him. That could be why, in the course of the keynote speech, he artfully dodged his administration’s dark underbelly as it pertained to Chinua Achebe’s 2004 scathing remark, by saying that “Achebe accepted a national award from me as well. That he, later, developed an aversion to national awards is a topic for Yale University’s epistemological researchers to uncover.”
What OBJ did not want to mention was that his administration was also implicated in the orgies of ‘state capture’ for advancement of political interests and or settlement of personal scores. Thus, Achebe, whom the occasion at the Yale University, was organized in his honour, had in the past rejected OBJ’s national award to protest the manifest abuse state power under his presidency. Achebe’s letter reads thus: “I write this letter with a very heavy heart. For some time now I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay…I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom…I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency…Nigeria’s condition today under your watch is, however, too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honour awarded me in the 2004 Honours List.”
Incidentally, OBJ’s then special assistant on public affairs, Femi Fani-Kayode, shrugged off the key issues raised by Achebe and lampooned him for preferring awards from other countries to his home country. It is the same approach of Fani-Kayode that President Tinubu’s handlers had adopted: hit back at the messenger, and water down the message. And that is why we are where we are today. People in government rarely take alternative views.
But beyond OBJ’s fiery criticisms, which benefited the ruling APC in 2015, President Tinubu has an urgent need to tackle the issues of ‘state capture’ and a failing state, which are evident. The face and the tone of the messenger may be unacceptable, but the message is incontrovertible.