Obasanjo’s dodgy decisions 

By Levi Obijiofor 

Friday, 27 July 2007 
 

At the last Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting before he quit as president, Olusegun Obasanjo announced in a cocky manner on Wednesday, 23 May 2007, that he had no regrets over the decisions he took as president because, in his judgment, the decisions were made in the interests of Nigeria. Nigeria’s national interests had been used dubiously by previous presidents to mask the fraudulent decisions they took for their own selfish interests. Often, the decisions were not based on altruistic reasons but were devised from lack of prudence, poor leadership skills and poor political judgments. Regrets or no regrets, there are now serious reasons why Obasanjo should be worried about the speed with which the decisions he took in his last year in office are being overturned by his successor.  

President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has started to dismantle questionable decisions that Obasanjo took during his eight years in office, in particular the decisions that were taken hurriedly in the last hours of Obasanjo’s second term. In a metaphoric sense, the house that Obasanjo built is collapsing faster than his cheerleaders predicted. Even before Yar’Adua began to knock down Obasanjo’s decisions, some of the leading figures in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had started to distance themselves from some of Obasanjo’s judgments. Take, for instance, party chairman Ahmadu Ali and his criticisms of Obasanjo’s economic and educational reforms, including the privatization and sale of various national assets, the removal of subsidies from agricultural products, as well as the proposed sale of federal government colleges.  

Implicit in Ali’s criticisms of Obasanjo’s economic decisions was the notion that those decisions were based not on national interests but on some other exotic and, if you like, esoteric reasons. Ali had argued that the removal of subsidies from agricultural products was wrong and illogical. In his view, the best way to revive agricultural production and boost productivity would be to restore subsidies to the agricultural sector in order to make farming an attractive occupation and to encourage farmers to produce more.  

For the period of his two-term tenure, Obasanjo, the self-styled born-again Christian president, shunned court judgments which directed that funds meant for Lagos State but withheld illegally by Obasanjo’s government should be released to the state government. Obasanjo used all bullying tactics in accounting books to deny a state government legal access to funds that belonged to the state. By directing on Monday this week that the long-held funds should be released to the Lagos State government (although without the interests that might have accrued), Yar’Adua had underlined the illegality of Obasanjo’s action, in particular Obasanjo’s contempt for judicial decisions on this contentious matter. Obasanjo withheld the money that belonged to Lagos State because he was visibly upset that Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State, had unilaterally created over 50 new local councils out of the existing 20 councils in 2004. A legal challenge went all the way to the Supreme Court where the court ruled on December 10, 2004, that states had the legal authority to create local councils. The court, however, pointed out that any amendment to the 1999 Constitution must be endorsed by the National Assembly. 

Ahead of the order to release the funds meant for Lagos State was another commendable presidential decision taken by Yar’Adua early last week. This concerned the revocation of the treacherously last-minute sale of the Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries by the Obasanjo government just days before the expiry of the term of that government. Given the massive public disapproval of the sale of the refineries, including the insidious, under-the-table manner in which the deals were wrapped, the revocation of the sale of these refineries has come as a huge relief to many people. It is unthinkable that a president, even in his last days, could dispose of such national resource in such an untidy way. The Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries represent major icons in our resource-rich nation.  

Petroleum products’ exploration, refinement and sale constitute part of the engines that power Nigeria’s economy. It is therefore important that the federal government should canvass public opinion before auctioning or selling off the refineries which are vital to revenue generation in the country. Selling the refineries in a hasty and dodgy manner is indicative of economic and financial impropriety. There are questions that need to be answered in order to establish the appropriateness of the sale of the refineries. When was the tender for the public sale of the refineries issued? How many expressions of interest were received? How were the tenders processed? What criteria informed the selection of the successful tenders? Who benefited from the sale of the refineries? At what price did the Obasanjo government sell the refineries? The nation needs answers to these and many other questions. Wherever he is, whatever he is doing, Obasanjo must account publicly, fully, openly and forthrightly for the suspicious deals his government entered into in the 11^th hour of his government. A genuine anti-corruption crusader should not make the kind of doubtful deals that Obasanjo sanctioned in the last hours of his second term as president.  

During the eight years of his reign as monarch, presidential courtiers and court jesters mounted a sustained campaign which projected Obasanjo’s policy decisions as judgments that were rock solid and cast in gold, based essentially on Obasanjo’s special communication with the angels. The nation was told repeatedly that Obasanjo was God’s special gift to the nation and it was important that his views were accepted without question. Barely two months after the exit of Obasanjo the king, all the high propaganda about the man’s superlative achievements are beginning to unravel. Obasanjo’s immaculate economic and political policies are falling apart. And the king’s messengers are in disarray too, unsure of how to stitch up the holes that dot the roof of the house the president built in soggy soil. I recall one indirect confrontation between Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida, during which each man claimed to have introduced strong and reliable economic policies for the nation. In his assertions, Babangida said the economic policies he bequeathed to the nation during his eight-year reign was solid and that those policies had enjoyed unparalleled success. Obasanjo’s counter-argument was half critical of Babangida and half egotistical.  

Obasanjo said he spent the better half of his first term trying to fix the economic problems that Babangida created when he was military president. If both men were unaware or were pretending not to know, they should be informed that their combined 16-year tenure was an unmitigated disaster in which they inflicted on the nation harsh economic conditions borne out of pathetic and unrealistic economic policies. In Babangida’s case, he lacked simple ideas about the basic principles of economics. But in his public statements, he unsurprisingly took credit for what he did not achieve. He insisted his regime configured the best economic policy for the nation. Unfortunately, what passed for economic policies under Babangida’s dictatorship were knee-jerk and uncoordinated attempts to grapple with double-digit inflation and the erratic value of the naira in the foreign exchange market.  

Many questions are beginning to emerge about Obasanjo and his style of government. Among the critical issues he must sort out is a recent Abuja Court of Appeal decision which stated that the payment of salaries in dollars to two ministers under Obasanjo’s government was illegal. Surely, Obasanjo must feel his integrity has been shredded by that appeal court judgment which condemned his decision to pay dollar salaries to two of his former ministers -- Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (former finance and foreign affairs minister) and Olufemi Adeniji (former foreign affairs minister). The Appeal Court ruled that Obasanjo’s decision to pay dollar salaries to the two ministers was both unconstitutional and an absue of office. More important though is the impact of this court pronouncement on Obasanjo’s image as an anti-corruption Czar. The court judgment, including Yar’Adua’s recent reversals of decisions made by Obasanjo, raise questions about Obasanjo’s moral character, the sincerity of his religious preachments and, above all, questions about Obasanjo’s capacity to make informed decisions that were in the best interests of the nation.