I have in the very recent days perceived the vitriol of many Nigerian patriots reacting to my attempted ‘defence’ of the General.  It has left one in a reflective mood, thinking thoughts that possibly some have failed to grasp and understand my ‘defence’ of the General. I should say that this was not unexpected, for I had been forewarned by one my dear friends.

My dear friend had a sneak preview of my article, ‘In Defence of General Obasanjo’.  After the preview of the initial draft his advice was clear, it was to give consideration to the shelving of the article and articulate my ‘defence’ in the private circles amongst familiar faces.  In our exchange of emails, he left me with the distinct impression that I choose to proceed with the ‘defence’ of the indefensible at my own peril.  But I remained deaf to his pleas and proceeded nonetheless for I thought it was our responsibility to speak truth to power as free men, for I tend to agree with the argument that truth is a thing of this world and that it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint and it includes regular effects of power.”[1]

It is also possible that I had a more sinister reason to script a ‘defence’ for the General?  I enjoy provoking debates and I love the underdog.  For when the evidence seems to be piling up left. right and centre and the allegations of corruption are numbered in their thousands and all cronies and fixers have departed from the scene of the General’s presence, I feel compelled by virtue of my training to visit the scene and ‘defend’ the indefensible.   Some observers may rightfully suggest that I am indulging in a futile pastime, fumbling around and groping in the dark, playing legalistic games while millions of Nigerian masses continue to reel from the after effects of 8 years of ‘misrule’.

I admit that in ‘defending the indefensible’ I have drawn attention of many including the Daily Triumph to a couple of red herrings I have thrown in various directions as a ‘distraction and an aside’.  In the process provoking a few angry responses.  But for me the relevance today beyond the melodrama is a key question.  If OBJ and cronies are indeed guilty of all the allegations circulating in the Nigerian polity, how do we handle this guilt so that the long suffering masses benefit in the long run?

May I suggest to those piling on pressure for the President Yar’Adua government to commence the lynching of the immediate past personified by OBJ, outside a judicial process have missed the central tension of today’s Nigerian State.  I venture to suggest that perhaps the central tension that faces the Nigerian President and indeed its people is between the politics of compromise/corruption and the radical notion of justice.[2] I believe this tension has already been expressed in different ways by different analysts of the process from authoritarian rule in Latin America and Eastern Europe to a democratic form of government and is a genuinely universal issue. Garreton, from Chile , sees it as "ethical logic" vs political state logic.[3]

Political scientists, such as O'Donnel state the dilemma somewhat more pragmatically, for them it is the need for democratic or stable democratisation as against the notion of justice, equality and restitution.[4]

Another way of expressing this tension is to distinguish between retributive justice on the one hand and a prudential focus on the common good and future injustice on the other. The former is the Nuremberg model used after the 2^nd World War to try the Nazis based on the positive duty of successive government’s to dispense justice for past crimes.

The difficulties with proceeding along the lines of the Nuremberg option for the General and friends are quite obvious:That is we isolate 8 years of alleged misrule from 48 years of mis-governance, detaching a few extreme villains, condemning, lynching whilst denouncing their corruption crimes, without engaging the Nigerian masses.

In this we could simply create decades of silence and leave it to the next generation in Nigeria to engage with the facing up to the significance of the atrocities committed.  In other words we set in continuum the cycle of corruption on a revolving door basis.

I support all right thinking persons and would welcome the reports in the Guardian of 26^th March 2008 that the EFCC is set to investigate the allegations of corruptions under OBJ. I take a direct quote stating that:

"You might not like the pace at which we are going in investigating Obasanjo. Ours is to ensure that we do things thoroughly. In so doing, we must not only display prudence, but we must be able to display professionalism so as to ensure that everything we do is in line with the scheme of things.

"You people are in a hurry, but we are telling you that we are on it and we will get to where we are going."

The EFCC official assured Nigerians that very soon, results of the commission's investigation into the activities of the former administration, including its key players, would be made public.

"You might want it now, but we assure you that you will get results, "he said.

Umaru commended the efforts and method adopted by CACOL in its agitation for the probe of the former president, saying that they were fighting for the good of the nation.”

I am certain that they are empowered and are capable of carrying out their investigations to a logical conclusion but I am less certain that they are equipped to try him for misrule, abuse of due process and miss-governance.

I suggest in OBJ’s ‘defence’ that any investigation of his government must not end there it must extend to all the years of the cankerworms and the guilty, if so established must be made to pay in a way that benefits, the long suffering masses of Nigeria.  The Nigerian masses deserve a windfall of development, good governance, infrastructural developments and the lot.  They need us to speak truth to power more than ever before.  So I suggest let the trial now commence.

The writer is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and currently works as a Field Director for Friends International.

Robot  Villager

# 1 This article attempts to identify the central tension facing the Nigerian state in the many calls for the trial of General Obasanjo. It suggests the tension is between the politics of compromise/corru...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 23.09.2008 03:23