Upon hitting the “period” button on my keyboard having completed my last essay on President Olusegun Obasanjo (The dilemma in hypocrisy…), I was quite sure but only fell short of vowing, that I had done my last appraisal on the present outgoing administration of Nigeria. When, in the aftermath of that article, mails started pouring in from intelligent readers in opposition to, and approval of my position, I was quite sure it was the same old routine. As usual, I posted the same article, after a specific period of grace, in another public forum for Nigerians, where debates are more open and direct. When rage and venom was brought to bear on me in the usual pattern of aggrieved enemies of the President, it was still nothing out of the ordinary. This time though, I was bent on returning fire for fire. The debate in this public forum was heated indeed and was sometimes, even personal. In the heat of the debate however, one contributor maintained his cool and confined himself to facts and facts alone. I sought to know from him what crime President Obasanjo has so badly committed to warrant this public verbal lynching culminating even in isolated calls for hanging him like Saddam Hussein. The compatriot gave me a long list of failures and poor achievements. These in my views do not constitute any crime because they are simply tantamount to underperformance. Unfortunately though, I almost lost sight of one important item in his lengthy list of grievances. It was the massacre of Odi and Zaki Biam.

Before going into further details, it may make intellectual sense to understand that my last article on the dilemma of hypocrisy indeed brought me under a barrage of fire from right and left. Supporters and enemies of the Presidents had their points to disagree with. One of our readers in his letter to the Editor, rejected my notion outright that Obasanjo was Nigeria’s most hated President ever. He referred to the control of the media by the opposition forces. Judging however, by the failure of the opposition to mobilize sufficient popular support against the President in recent times in spite of massive media support, I was compelled to give this thought some credible consideration. Enemies of the President on their own, disputed anything positive about the President’s achievements even to the extent of attributing achievements in the field of GSM to Sani Abacha. My lonesome voice in the wilderness frantically begging for fairness and objectivity in assessing Obasanjo could no longer disguise a mounting sense of frustration. I was therefore quite thankful for a few sentences that appeared in the Vanguard newspaper of May 26^th, 2007 in the assessment of Olusegun Obasanjo:

LIKE him, hate him, be indifferent: Matthew Olusegun Aremu Okikiolakan Obasanjo, by chance, Divine Providence or whatever you may ascribe it to has deeply etched himself into the portals of Nigerian history. He will be on record as the only Nigerian leader so far to have led the nation as a military Head of State, and twenty years later, to lead again as an elected civilian president. If you flip the coin, he will also be the president that openly battled his deputy in a fight-to-finish whose end we are not sure we have seen, even as the curtain closes on his administration.

Obasanjo has done very well or performed woefully, depending on which level of the economy you’re operating. To ordinary Nigerians, most of whom are at the fringes of the economy, he has done nothing, especially when they weigh the impact of fuel deregulation and the comatose electric power situation on their lives. If you’re at the core of the economy, Obasanjo is a messiah who has stabilized exchange rate, wiped out the debt burden, got Nigeria off the FATF list, consolidated the banks, and inveigled foreign investors to come in. To many therefore, his tenure is a mixed gruel of conflicting tastes — peppery, sour, sweet, sugary, bitter.

Having said that, I thought it was time to turn the table and watch from the optical lenses of the President’s enemies. All shouting and abusing have been done and never undone! I had no clue whatsoever, what Odi and Zaki Biam stand for. Critics insisted however, that since I was not going to settle for underperformance in Obasanjo’s eight years that was characterized by abundant financial resources, as criminal, I should provide answers to Odi and Zaki Biam. No one was ready to tell me precisely what these two towns meant in Obasanjo’s presidency. I was told so much though, that the presence of some criminal elements amongst the civilian community would simply not warrant genocide on the local folks.

When I eventually spread out my dragnet to consult friends and acquaintances to seek answers to the query, no one could tell me precisely what happened in these two isolated communities in the Niger Delta. No one had any accurate memory of the incidents save the contention that the towns symbolize tragedy. When I finally did an Internet scan however, Wikipedia gave me a brief account of what happened in Odi. The killing of seven police officers and the pursuit of the suspected killers into this community was said to have resulted in the mass killing of unarmed civilians.

A further scan led me to a BBC correspondent’s report on Zaki Biam. The correspondent summed up his experiences as follows “What I saw was appalling and I hope never to see such a thing again.” The abduction and subsequent killing of 19 soldiers was said to have sparked off a shooting spree in a marketplace and the burning and looting of houses and stores. The crime was said to be horrendous. Worse still, the BBC correspondent reported official reaction as follows:

The army chief of staff in Abuja says his men were not responsible for these atrocities. The president has not condemned them - indeed he says that soldiers are trained to kill and that is what Nigerians should expect when they are deployed.

What could be more disgusting? Indeed, I remember Saddam Hussein’s reported gassing of the Kurds in a geographical section of Iraq. Failure on the part of the President, to even condemn an act of this nature no matter the implicit message it may have sent by collateral implication, just cannot hold in a democracy. The least the President should have done was to have set up a commission of inquiry to look into the incident. This was a clear military mentality in the handling of civilian affairs. This is one of two clear issues, on which I foresee long-term trouble for the President (alive or dead).

Another issue is the recent strange and very outlandish developments in the murder mystery of the late Minister of Justice Bola Ige. In several essays, I have echoed calls on the President to come clean on the issue and unearth a load of obvious hints that he is perceived but not proven to be harboring. There are several loose ends that simply do not fit. Many questions begging for answers.

Insinuations that I have heard so far, account for a planned meeting between Bola Ige and a drug baron that was allegedly, to bring some agreed amount (don’t ask me for what?) on that fateful night. The night was said to have been preceded by a tedious and tiring day in the aftermath of a visit to George Ige (Bola’s dying brother) in Lagos and a lot of other Christmas preparations. It therefore goes that if Bola Ige granted permission to his security team for a deserved break, he was probably forestalling any third party witnessing the arrival of this drug baron. On the other hand however, if the security team went on a self-imposed break without the permission of their boss, all at the same time to coincide with the murder of the Minister, the collaborative spirit of massive conspiracy will no doubt, sound a deafening alarm bell. The truth is that these officers in the security team are all in service till the present moment and have not been dismissed from service.

Speculations hold clearly that the conspiracy to kill Bola Ige may not be unconnected with the complete leadership of the PDP and the Federal government at the time. My inquiries further revealed that the trio of Abubakar Atiku, Sunday Afolabi (Bola Ige’s arch enemy) and Iyiola Omisore executed the planning of the killing. Early arrests after the assassination was said to have corroborated this version of events, before the witness was said to have been released again. If that was true, the closeness of Abubakar Atiku to the President at the time, cannot wash the President free of complicity or even attest him ignorance of what prevailed. But the subsequent arrest of Omisore and release thereafter, was far less spectacular as opposed to his extremely controversial winning of a senate seat from a prison cell. All compelling hallmarks of possible complicity and resultant bribery for silence.

It is highly astounding that the arrest of the present culprits was preceded by the President’s proclamation of ascertained responsibility for the killing of Bola Ige. There is also information that Bola Ige once appealed to Professors Adeyeye and Wole Soyinka in a meeting in California, to rally round Obasanjo because he feared that the PDP was a den of killers in which the life of Obasanjo was at risk. That was not a sign of a strained relationship. It is therefore, all the more puzzling that there is a cover-up undeniably underway. How much does Obasanjo know? What is all this seeming cover-up about? Direct accomplice?

This is definitely another political banana skin on which the President will definitely slip sooner or later (dead or alive). Absolute clearance devoid of a whitewash may not be expected under Yar’Adua. If the trouble however starts after Obasanjo’s death, it will leave him with a lasting negative legacy alongside his several laudable achievements on the economic front.

Robot  Villager

# 1 Upon hitting the “period” button on my keyboard having completed my last essay on President Olusegun Obasanjo (...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 29.09.2008 19:20