Although it came as no surprise, the resignation of former president Olusegun Obasanjo from the PDP; and the spectacle of tearing his PDP membership card as a public repudiation of the party and its president, Goodluck Jonathan, was nothing more than self-seeking, whimsical and disdainful political grandstanding that graphically tells the odious and mundane craving that typify Nigeria’s political life. With his petulance, foul temperament and imprudent conduct, OBJ has impoverished the sobriety and dignity of his presidential stature in ways that belittle his public standing as a statesman. However, Jonathan has been equally imprudent, almost puerile, in a way that advertises a certain pettiness at the highest level of Nigeria’s leadership. Other than embarrass the country, the unedifying name-calling and trash-talk does little credit to both men’s claim to statesmanship. The volatile situation invariably opens another flashpoint if Jonathan wins the March 28 elections; and if not carefully handled, may put further stress on Nigeria’s troubled democracy.
As the relationship between the two men gets messier, the PDP said Jonathan would soon disclose all alleged personal demands of Obasanjo that he had turned down since 2011 that might have fuelled the lingering animosity. This is petty, pithy and unpresidential; it is cheap blackmail; indecorous and inappropriate to the high office Jonathan occupies. The president must resist the temptation and pressure from his inner circle to engage Obasanjo in public exchanges that belittle the exalted office of the President of the Federal Republic. Beyond the avuncular admonition and verbal castigation, and provocation, Obasanjo’s propensity for self-imposition as moral ombudsman and conscience of the nation, is well-known. The better response would be for Jonathan to ignore him and take the high road. That is statesmanship.
After his failed third term bid, Obasanjo left office in 2007, a bitter and disillusioned man. From the outside looking in, Obasanjo maintained his influence within the PDP, by self-imposition on the vantage position of chairman of the Board of Trustees (BOT). This put him at loggerheads with Jonathan, after the President refused to do his bidding on issues ranging from ministerial appointments to distribution of oil fields and oil wealth. In 2011, after the death of Yar’Adua, Jonathan campaigned and won a mandate on a transformational agenda, and decided to be his own man. This required taking control of the levers of power not just in the government, but in the ruling party, where as president, he was the uncontested leader. Using proxies, Jonathan initiated clandestine machinations to whittle down Baba’s influence on party matters. In a fit of anger, Obasanjo ignominiously resigned as BOT chairman in April 2012, saying he needed to focus on the demands of his time as a statesman at home and abroad.
With Baba out, Jonathan went to town, slowly edging out OBJ loyalists from the commanding heights of authority in the PDP; reconstituting the National Working Committee (NWC), the decision making organ of the party, in February 2013. The “night of long knives” climaxed with the purge of OBJ’s anointed appointees who were replaced with Jonathan loyalists, even in Obasanjo’s own political backyard in the South-West and his home state of Ogun. As if that was not enough provocation, an arrest warrant was issued for OBJ’s daughter, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo, who sought refuge in her father’s farm house in Ota, to evade arrest. It was the ultimate humiliation for OBJ who hand-picked the Yar’Adua/Jonathan ticket, after unseating the elected governor of Bayelsa State, Timipre Sylva and replacing him with Jonathan.
Baba took his humiliation with uncharacteristic stoicism; plotting his revenge and hitting Jonathan where he was most vulnerable. He started a macabre dance with the opposition. In December 2013 Baba hosted the national leader of the APC; former Lagos governor, Bola Tinubu, accompanied by APC top brass, including Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, Jonathan’s main challenger in next month’s election. Tinubu praised Obasanjo and lamented that the present leaders appear not to understand the enormity of the challenges before them, and lack the capability to act. He urged OBJ to continue speaking truth to power, stating “we are resolved and determined to rescue Nigeria and we want you as navigator.”
OBJ thanked his guests for their visit but reaffirmed he remained a card carrying member of the PDP, but encouraged them to play politics without bitterness and rancor. The game was now on and the music had changed into a war song. The parlay with the APC leadership was curiously followed by an 18-page open letter (mischievously leaked to the press) wherein he identified five areas – PDP leadership, the federal government, the defence forces, national security, and political leadership of the country – where Jonathan has failed. The president dismissed his attack as “reckless, baseless, unjustifiable and indecorous”. OBJ went on to release his autobiography in December 2014 in which excerpts described Jonathan as a self-centred politician “who thinks less of the country and fraternizes with corrupt and questionable characters.” The president’s men attempted to block the book’s release via a court order but OBJ defied the injunction and went ahead with the book launch.
But in a surprise move, a rapprochement of sorts took place on January 5 after photos emerged of OBJ attending the wedding of Jonathan’s daughter. This was followed with a meeting at Baba’s farmhouse the next day with Jonathan and some Christian religious leaders who acted as mediators. The meeting reportedly broke down after OBJ refused to formally endorse Jonathan, and made matters worse as he again welcomed the APC leadership and Buhari into his home only a few hours after Jonathan’s departure. The APC were on a campaign stop in Abeokuta, OBJ’s home city, and had come to solicit his support. OBJ, to the delight of his visitors declared, “I’ll support the best candidate irrespective of party”, leaving no doubt as to whose side he was really on?
It must also be put on record that OBJ has invested too much energy into bad-mouthing Jonathan at home and abroad. Given the privileges with which Nigeria’s national history has endowed Baba as a two-time head of state and as an elder, both traditionally and politically; it is pertinent to wonder whether Baba, at this point in time, has any moral justification to pontificate to anyone on the present state of affairs to which he is a major contributor. Baba afterall, designed and implemented the failed third term bid that eventually culminated in the Yar’Adua/Jonathan presidencies that he now laments!
Fresh in the nation’s collective memory is Baba’s role as an effective cause of the perfidy, ineptitude and political monstrosities he now decries. The fact that he selfishly foisted on Nigerians his two successors, Yar’Adua and Jonathan, who were obviously unable and unprepared to run the country, OBJ ought to be hiding his head in shame. His intemperate criticism of Jonathan reeks of self-righteousness, since he proffers no solutions to the challenges facing the country. The standing view is that OBJ is distracting the president from his core duty of governing the country. Now that OBJ has quit the PDP, the Presidency should consider him as an irrelevant nuisance and treat him as such. Nigeria is at stake and, prolonging these needless ad hominem attacks in the public space is diversionary and counterproductive. The exchanges are not even good politics and should stop immediately. Political decorum demands just that.
