In Defence of Obasanjo

IN DEFENCE OF
OBASANJO
Nigerians...Read the full article.

[tonsoyo]

I appreciate this writer more for having the courage to write this piece, knowing that Nigerians are aversed to anything pro-government, in as much as the person in charge is not their benefactor or to some from their ethnic stock.

[Zanderlex]

Even the dreaded Anini did some good. The point is that Obasanjo had the chance on multiple occasions to make Nigeria better than it is today but he made a concious choice out of selfishness to lead Nigeria to the path of slow death by the singular action of masterminding the emergence of an illegitimate government.

[Anon]

Originally Posted by Zanderlex

Even the dreaded Anini did some good...

GBAM GBAM GBAM GBAM GBAM. People forget that depending on who you ask that all these leaders Max compares to Obsanjo would have something about them that they like.

Originally Posted by Zanderlex

The point is that Obasanjo had the chance on multiple occasions to make Nigeria better than it is today but he made a concious choice out of selfishness to lead Nigeria to the path of slow death by the singular action of masterminding the emergence of an illegitimate government

More Gbosas for you but it even goes beyond the elections. The fact that we have no physical infastructure to boast off, despite the high record oil revenue that his adminsitration got relative to all others, it just makes you wonder. People talk about buying shares all the time, but yet there are no hospitals, no roads and no food to eat.

[dirosky]

Obsanjo, Yar Adua - they have the chance to make history. A chance most people in the Nigerian community will never get. Obasanjo did not make history so in essence he failed. The opportunity to lead your nation is one that should be cherished. Sadly because of the way people get this chance (through the sort of elections we hold), the value is greatly diminished.

That not withstanding, any president that spends 8 years in office in Nigeria and does not improve our most basic of infrastructure, has failed. End of.

Yar Adua has his chance and will be judged similarly in 7 years.

All the obasanjo apologists should carry on. It is their right as is that of those that suffer everyday to insist on no more mediocrity.

[X-Ray]

I am grateful and extremely thankful for sound minds like these who have invaluable sense of Nigerian history and politics.

The writer has provided tremendously vital bits of information I am sure many, including myself, have till now not been privileged to know. The careful breakdown of the different positive aspects of the last administration was particularly remarkable and I hope that those with open minds will learn form this. Really, little can be done about those who hold a bias against the former president, for they have an entirely different motivation. But we can focus on the many who want to move this country forward as a united entity bound for stability and success.

Whilst some succumb to a permanent fatalistic and divisive outlook for Nigeria, their counterparts are back home in Nigeria making worthy contributions to the growth and development of this nation with such great potential. It is my believe that Nigeria is on the rise as evidently indicated by the many developments highlighted in this article. And Nigeria shall continue to rise in spite of nay-sayers who brim with unbelievable hate-filled pessimism. There are many Nigerians who can discern success from failure, progress from stagnation, and hope from despair.

There are critics and there are critics. There those who criticize for the sake of criticizing, and never see an ounce of progress come whatever. What they fail to realize is, that their one-sidedness criticisms make their agendas abundantly clear to sound minds.

I agree with the writer that the Obasanjo government was far from excellent, but it has given us a platform and direction that is leading us away from the chaos of the past towards a more fruitful future.

The process of governance is a continuous affair, and the baton of leadership has been handed over to a new leader, who happened to also be the choice of the former president. Umaru Yar Ardua is already benefiting from the tracks of progress laid down by his predecessor. Both men have demonstrated their commitment to the Nigerian project, and it's only natural they might have different modes of operation. But the aim is the same to empower Nigerians and uplift Nigeria. So will the real lovers of the Nigerian state please stand up!

[RAYNOSA]

I must say a big thank you for this article,If for 8years OBJ was able to achive so little given the abundant resources at his disposal.
It will be only wise for YAR'DUA'S government to re-write OBJ's carry overs,then give themselves a good score sheet.Though i sincerely do not see them doing this.
Scolding PAST GOVERNMENT all the time will do us no good as a NATION.

From the look of things OBJ'S government id sure going to be better than YAR'DUA'S.

[peterclaver2006]

When he was running away in 1993, Babangida thought he could one day, re-write history to serve his purpose. For this, he heaped on himself so many appellate and spoke so vainly of how he re-engineered Nigeria. Today, he is a living witness that you can’t fool the people all the time. Obasanjo mimicked and indeed surpassed as his humiliating failure of the eight years became obvious. He tagged himself, ‘founder of modern Nigeria’, ‘father of a new Nigeria’ and such other vain epaulettes that only advertise his limitations. As Babangida commissioned so many revisionists to commence his re-invention quest after failing so badly, so is Obasanjo, so frustrated with just a prologue of his disastrous siege of the last eight years, have done. But we know that these are exercises that are doomed before they are started because one cannot run away from his deeds. Idi Amin, Jean Bedel Bokassa, Samuel Doe, Mobutu Seseseko, Mengitsu Haile Mariam and such other soulmates of Obasanjo sure have their own trumpeters. Such fluid and vacuous ‘achievements’ the author struggled to put together all tailspinned into the hellish enclave we have in our hands today. If Obasanjo and co thought they would live on such tenuous struggles to whitewash a disastrous regime which, with over N40 trillion, reduced life expectancy from 55 years to 39 years, then it has a job in its hands. If for eight years, a regime has nothing to celebrate than lying about settling Ndigbo (such horrible farce), setting up a kitchen cabinet of cronies, setting up a hunt dog in EFCC, licensing telecommunications companies, extorted them green and unleashed them on Nigerians and such other incoherent ‘achievements’ the writer sweated to invent, then we need nothing to prove the fact that this man, Obasanjo is a gross failure. Compared with Abacha, Obasanjo is a proven misfit, as shown in the riotous charade he ran for eight years. Abacha must be protesting from his grave presently for attempting to compare him with this duplicitous sly man called Obasanjo and he is right because given all indications, Abacha ran a better, more honest government than Obasanjo and this is a fact that is as real as it is damning for the deceptive regime and its handmaidens. With all manners of international sanctions, Abacha never subjected Nigerians to continuous extortions in the name of fuel price increases Obasanjo made a fundamental policy of his regime. Yet Abcha built roads, equipped hospitals, controlled the foreign exchange regime, perfectly handled inflation. Obasanjo was not able to achieve any of these with an eight years oil boom while he left with a sadistic imposition of another fuel price increment, with inflation nearing a 2,000 per cent digit, with all infrastructures dead and carted away by him and his cronies, with Nigeria leased to armed robbers and all manners of killers, etc.

Here is your Obasanjo, do you have any contrary view?


OBASANJO AND HISTORY’S JUDGMENT.
By Peter Claver Oparah


Recently, former President Olusegun Igbochukwu Obasanjo was quoted as expressing the optimism that history will someday vindicate him. The occasion was one of the sessions in self-masturbation, the type rulers who had wasted their commission and were on the cutting edge of history resort to. Styled a welcome ceremony by former students colleagues of his, newspaper reports had it that the ceremony was severally interrupted by power outage, an uncanny way history wanted to outrightly remind Obasanjo of the futility of eating one’s cake and having it, as such hope for a brighter judgment by history he lacerated and raped so violently portends.

It was obvious that Obasanjo and the people that mount that dry re-invention quest for him were very much aware of what history and indeed the millions of Nigerians that suffered the buccannerist feel of Obasanjo in power had for the sly ex-leader. It was very clear what his standing is with a history that had been so generous to him yet he flunked all in the pursuit of annoying pettiness, guile, sheer duplicity, mediocrity, vanity and primitive personal greed. By laying the intended shortfalls of his anti-climatic regime on history, Obasanjo was trying to extend the elastic tolerance of history to unimaginable limits. For this he is home with all manners of under-achieving pretenders to leadership that diverted the primary spaces of their offices to serve narrow and often corrupt ends that shortchange the society in the long run. One other fellow that employs history in such demeaning light is Ibrahim Babangida, Obasanjo’s soulmate in fraud and dubiety and with whom he wrote the leviathan of the present hobbled state, which devours its inhabitants with roaring passion.

But pray, how does Obasanjo want history to see him after the grand debauchery of the past eight years? Like Babangida deceived himself to think, does he think that history is an irreverent brunt bearer, a purifier of sorts that blots out one’s misdemeanors and makes heroes of villains and vice versa? Is there any chance that Obasanjo was oblivious of the pallid state he endowed on the country with a bottomless revenue base in a regime that would shock the hell out of all of us on how a government should not be? Why is it that people like Muhammadu Buhari did not lay on history the burden of accounting for their deeds in office, even as the forces of revisionism seek to obliterate our perception of what is right or wrong?

But as to how history will remember Obasanjo, let me give him a sneak preview, if he and his trumpeters pretend they don’t know. History will remember Obasanjo as the leader who came with trailer loads of promises and delivered mere trays of peanuts at the end of his regime. History will judge him by the power sector he promised to put right in six months but which at the end of six years degenerated from the over 3,000 megawatts he met to below 1,000 megawatts when he left, with trillions of megawatts of darkness generated by phantom power stations that gulped trillions of Naira in a cesspool of corruption Obasanjo dug. History will note that Obasanjo presided over the worst state of infrastructures recorded in the nation’s history where the country was severed into several bits by irreparable roads while trillions of Naira went down the corrupt drain Obasanjo sunk in eight years of unimpeded waste-laying. History will remember Obasanjo for intentionally killing the nation’s refineries under a dubious deregulation policy that ended up growing a cult of rent-seeking billionaires while impoverishing the masses.

History will remember Obasanjo as the regime that reaped an eight years oil windfall but which paradoxically inflicted the most callous, inhuman and mindless extortion on poverty-wracked citizenry through countless fuel price increments. History will remember Obasanjo for the organized corruption he promoted while mouthing the commitment to fighting corruption. While Babangida gave corruption an official stamp, Obasanjo tended and grew it to the stature of an all-encompassing decibel, an intractable anathema to national growth. History will remember Obasanjo for his sickening hypocrisy, annoying shortcomings, absurd pettiness, personal insecurity, morbid personality complex and his many deficits, which were rolled into one insipid brand of babaism, with all the attendant fatalism that prodded the country to the very edge of disaster as the eight years of unprecedented leadership dementia lasted.

History will remember Obasanjo as the grand patron of official stealing that doubled as an unlikely thief-catcher, with the myriad of untidy corrupt deals that will outlive many generations trailing his uninspiring frame. History will remember Obasanjo as the man that promoted a bizarre, asinine and insensate cult of educationally-challenged urchins, street toughs and mandarins to desecrate and trample the sacred canons of democracy while he celebrated them in a move to spite all that is sane and decent in Nigeria. From this morbid passion sprouted the anathema of the Lamidi Adedibus, the Uba dynasty, the Ahmadu Allis, the Ibrahim Mantus, the Anenihs, the Bode Georges and such other references of soulless gadflies that cooked up the contrived political flashpoints that flowered the descent into babaism.

History will remember Obasanjo as the leader whose feel on gold turned it to saw dust; the direct opposite of Midas and after whose deadly touch, Nigeria became a prostrate, clay footed giant lying lifeless on the slab of the political, economic and social undertakers Obasanjo grew while in office. History will remember Obasanjo as the man that promoted the violent defrauding of the poor and the weak and a callous empowering of a cult of sybaritic buccaneers that live on public rent and duping the whole for survival. A pervert Robin Hood that was driven by his personality deficits into believing that he would outrun his sordid past. History will remember Obasanjo for burying the educational and the health sectors, livewires of any society that aspires for progress and left the country with a carcass of ill-manufactured and poorly ventilated placebos.

History will remember Obasanjo as the man that destroyed while mounting empty sloganeering of good intent, a terribly circumspect and mediocre leader that rubbed off negatively on all sectors of governance. He remains the only leader that grew an economy in decayed infrastructures and pitched darkness! History will remember Obasanjo as the uncaring leader who feathered his nest and those of the dumb hirelings that sang his useless praises while inflicting maximum pains on the rest of the citizenry for eight years. History will remember Obasanjo as that lawless dictator that rode roughshod over the country’s laws and statutes and denigrated its courts and traditions so as to serve his pristine interests. History will remember Obasanjo as the Nebuchadnezer that pursued vindictive policies that stood out for their crudity in persecuting those that disagree with him and rewarding those that urge him on his self-elected deathwish. History will remember Obasanjo as the one that twisted court judgments so as to make them amenable to his caprices. History will remember Obasanjo as the old man blinded by infantile selectiveness in dispensing favours and persecution, an unfeeling principality that relished the arts of naked sadism with such grand fervour. History will remember Obasanjo as the one who did the direct opposite of what he preached and preached the direct opposite of what he did. History will remember Obasanjo as the leader that lied with the prurience of a dripping basket, a grand adult that relished infantile games and pranks and adopted such a directive principle of governance in Nigeria.

Need I go further? History will remember Obasanjo for offloading the highest number of Nigerian workers into the unemployment market through a dubious right-sizing policy. History will remember Obasanjo as a the leader, who through dubious reforms, turned Nigerian graduates into okada riders, recharge card sellers, prostitutes, armed robbers, political thugs and street urchins, who turned the countries industries into churches and miracle markets. History will still remember him as the one that led the army of self-glorifying hustlers as reformers and who ended up duping the country of all its assets and reformed their pockets while depravity was launched on our true native land. History will remember Obasanjo as that leader that presided over the most carnivorous defrenestation of the poor, the institution of havens of corruption in the ministries and public corporations and the satiation of the naked greed of political urchins.

History will yet remember Obasanjo as the man that presided over the largest volume of premeditated political murders, the worst state of insecurity, the most disastrous state of inflation, the state of widespread want and despair in the midst of unparalleled oil wealth. History will remember Obasanjo as the man that presided over the most heinous official theft that humbled the Babangida/Abacha epochs. History will remember Obasanjo as the man that presided over the most callous stripping of public assets under various shady garbs. History will remember Obasanjo for whimsically manipulating the structures of the state to the service of self while his terror of a regime lasted. History will remember Obasanjo for being the grand machinator and concoctor of electoral fraud in Nigeria; the man that visited all sectors of national fraud with horrible fraud such that if the evil Babangida wrought on Nigeria would take two century to correct, the evil Obasanjo visited on Nigeria will take ten centuries to correct.

I and millions of other Nigerians that suffer the aftermaths of Obasanjo’s bizarre presence here for eight years already know what history records for him. The practical effect could be gleaned from the intractable wreck he left after eight years in power. I am very convinced that he and his handmaidens that now seek to secure the stable door after the donkey has bolted, know what his place in history is. It is in his nature to pretend that he was numbed for the period he turned deaf and blind to our plea for a better polity. In his pretence, he still believes history still owes him an IOU after eleven years in power. But we know he is playing the game other despicable characters that have taken turns to rape men and history played. He will never win this war.

[chibuzor]

Bros,

I have looked at your list of achievements. I come look am again. All of them come resemble rubbish (you sef look am well). But I say make I no worry because na you get your mouth.

You try, you hear?

[i-go-better]

I feel ashamed reading your article: Your darling Obj, 8yrs in government plus 3yrs past experience and TRILLIONS OF DOLARS IN REVENUE should be celebrated according to you because of his achievements in:

1. International Standing
2. The Army
3. Igbos
4. Telephony
5. EFCC
6. The Obj's kitchen carbinet.

Compare with a real government worth celebrating, eg Tony Blair with far less income but yet being battered left and right from both citizens and non-citizens:

1. Totally Free Medicare for citizens and non citizens
2. Total free education for citizens and non-citizens(university students get loans repayable only when employed and earning certain amount of income)
3. Unemployment benefit for citizens and non-citizens
4. Free Housing for deserving citizens and non-citizens
5. Child Benefit allownaces for citizens and non-citizens
6. Most effective transportation system.

That is a government for the people that needs to be celibrated yet heavily criticised by the people and no single Briton has written in defence of Tony Blair.
There are many others but I have just chosen Six(6) to match your highly researched but scarvenged six wonderful achievements of your lord baba Obj.

Note: in your achievement list, there is no mention of EDUCATION, MEDICAL FACILITIES, EMPLOYMENT, TRANSPORTATION, ENERGY SUPPLY, these motive force of any society that is moving forward.

99% of your darling Obj's achievements are programmed for self glorification and that defines Obj. The last civil war was his COMMAND; Abiola is not a messiah, Obj is; Gowon did not forget something in the State House, Obj did; OFN became OTA FARM; Army equiped so long as the weapons bear Obj's name; EFCC and Obj's opponents; Commissioning of even a school block must be carried out by Obj even uncompleted ones so that Obj's name would be on the plaque: should I continue, I don't think there is any need, DO-OR-DIE encapsulated it all!

[skanbroy]

Originally Posted by i-go-better

I feel ashamed reading your article: Your darling Obj, 8yrs in government plus 3yrs past experience and TRILLIONS OF DOLARS IN REVENUE should be celebrated according to you because of his achievements in:

!

Trillion Dollars in revenue? Really? My broda am sure this is a typo.

[chibuzor]

Originally Posted by skanbroy

Trillion Dollars in revenue? Really? My broda am sure this is a typo.

Bros,
I am sure you did not wish to take the sting out of that response.
Try HYPERBOLE.

If you cannot deal with that then consider converting OBJ's millions/billions to Zim dollars.

[Bolaji Aluko]

Compatriots:


At the very minimum, you judge a man's contribution, a leader of a country or institution, by:


1. what he says that he will achieve before assuming office, or what he says right upon assuming office, or while in office;

2. the resources available to achieve his stated objectives;

3. the time that he has to achieve them;

4. what the people he leads say about his impact on their lives after some time in office.


Any other barometers are commentary.

Obasanjo gave a minimum of 24 major speeches in his 1999 - 2007 tenure: 3 each year (January 1, Budget Speech and October 1) from 1999 - 2005 (in 1999, it was Inauguration speech May 1999 rather than New Year January 1, 1999), and January 1 in 2007. I challenge ANYONE to state whether he told ANYONE in his earliest speeches that his achievements on which he would be judged for ever would be Army, Telephony, Igbo or Kitchen Cabinet.

Let us not talk about Telephony - that is too jejune - or about the Igbo. Give a majority of the Igbo a LITTLE OPPORTUNITY to escape from the polity called Nigeria, and they will do so INTO Biafra, Iwala, Soludo, Ezekwesili, Akunyili notwithstanding. The Igbo called Obasanjo an Igbo-hater until recently when it was hinted that he might even be Igbo himself, via Onitsha...

Moving on...

True, Nigeria's international standing improved significantly, but after Abacha, even another MILITARY REGIME would have had improved image, and even any civilian regime more. But can we now IMAGINE the battering that Nigeria's international image has received after the WORST elections in Nigerian history (April 2007) refereed by Obasanjo? His own international reputation has suffered teremendously, so much so that he has not been invited to ANY major international advisory body since, confining himself to receiving accolades from Owu and environs.

True that we paid our debts, but was there a national consensus behind that? Who says that upcoming regimes CANNOT incur more debts? Are we now not incurring new debts, with China loaning us $2 billion to build police homes? Have more FDI come into Nigeria SIMPLY because we are debt-free? Has a cost benefit analysis been done yet - or is it just wishy-washy wishful thinking?

True that the Army is more obedient to civilian rule, but ANYONE who says that the Army can no longer come back in Nigeria FOR EVER must be smoking something.

True that he used young technocrats and more women in his administration, particularly in his second term -- but did he INSTITUTIONALIZE the use of young people and women eg as in proposing laws to LIMIT the age of his ministers or percentage of women in cabinet or as lawmakers? Absolutely not! I amn not saying that it is desirable to do so, but NONE of what he did is irreversible.

Here are three things that Obj did right that I would highlight:

1. elevating the issue of corruption to national discourse, and setting up the EFCC and the ICPC. Now that is INSTITUTIONALIZATION, for which he can be commended. But with the GREATEST amount of money received under one administration in NIgeria's history being under Obasanjo, the GREATEST amount of corruption too occurred right under his nose, with the GREATEST type of corruption being the stealing of the peoples' mandates in the April 2007 elections.

2. elevating the issue of contributions of the Diaspora to nation-building. I felt that he GENUNIENLY believes and believed that we have something to contribute, and it is then up to us in the Diaspora to make sure that this elevation does not die after he might have gone.

3. ensuring that what revenue each government level (federal, state and local government) is allocated is published on a monthly basis. That is good transparency.


Finally, what do the people - the ordinary people - say? Have their personal security, access to energy, water, roads, education, food, drugs etc. improved - their real Human Development Index - either marginally or significantly? No, no and no. I remember that at or near the beginning of Obasanjo's administration, salaries and ability to buy (Tokunboh) cars JUMPED significantly, and those were hailed as part of his "dividends of democracy." Have you heard about those recently - "dividends of democracy?".

Mba!


So, Max Soillum, there you have it. I am not impressed.



Bolaji Aluko

[Goddy]

Dear Prof. Aluko,

Na wah oh!

You devoted a huge part of your comment to concurring with almost all the assertions of the writer...so much that you even added your own list of Obj's accomplishments. You indeed went on to educate the public about the sensitizing (of the populace) nature of some of Obj's actions while office.

And after all that---you ended your comment with just a paragraph of what you considered to be the expectations of the "common man" from Obj's govt. And finally, you gave a verdict stating that you were not impressed with the article...Haba! With all those accolades, what else would you have written if you were "impressed" with the article? Your verdict could just not be reconciled with your over-all view as expressed earlier.

Goddy.

[ebasain]

Is Max Siollun talking about Obasanjo, the immediate past president of Nigeria? He simply

cannot be serious. PERIOD!

[i-go-better]

Originally Posted by skanbroy

Trillion Dollars in revenue? Really? My broda am sure this is a typo.

Skanbroy;

I am not surprised that you are surprised at that amount. Let me help you; calculate how many REAL Barrels of oil(bunkered, bribed, wasted, etc) comes out of our land EVERY DAY; Add other sources of revenue that produce hard cash; Add foreign help in hard currency(in education, census, election, health etc) and then multiply by 8YRS.
You can them write me to adjust my figure of trillion with due apology to you sir.

[Bolaji Aluko]

Goddy:

That I accept facts does not mean that I accept what is attributed to those facts. I do not for example accept it as a glory that Obasanjo paid Nigeria's debts in the midst of other gnawing needs, when I know that it was not those debts that stopped us from developing, neither will us paying them make us now develop faster.

That is a distinction with a big difference.

Of the THREE additional Obj "accomplishments" that I mentioned, only ONE involved institutionalization: the creation of ICPC and EFCC. Diaspora involvement and allocation publication can be stopped in a day if desired.

Obviously, the crux of my objections to Sioullan's piece was the lack of institutionalization coupled with the lack of fulfillment of earlier stated objectives.

By the way, what I was not "impressed" about were Obj's purported accomplishments; I was "impressed" at Sioullan's valiant attempt to put a lipstick on a frog of non-accomplishments.


Bolaji Aluko

[tonsoyo]

Originally Posted by Bolaji Aluko

Goddy:

That I accept facts does not mean that I accept what is attributed to those facts. I do not for example accept it as a glory that Obasanjo paid Nigeria's debts in the midst of other gnawing needs, when I know that it was not those debts that stopped us from developing, neither will us paying them make us now develop faster.

That is a distinction with a big difference.

Of the THREE additional Obj "accomplishments" that I mentioned, only ONE involved institutionalization: the creation of ICPC and EFCC. Diaspora involvement and allocation publication can be stopped in a day if desired.

Obviously, the crux of my objections to Sioullan's piece was the lack of institutionalization coupled with the lack of fulfillment of earlier stated objectives.

By the way, what I was not "impressed" about were Obj's purported accomplishments; I was "impressed" at Sioullan's valiant attempt to put a lipstick on a frog of non-accomplishments.


Bolaji Aluko

Prof.

It is even unnecessary for you to reply to the accusations of people like Goddy. Your stand on OBJ's year is known to all and sundry.

The problem I have always had with some people here concerning OBJ is that they are aversed to anybody trying to bring out the positive parts of his administration just to balance the story. This guy even termed it "accolades" abeg wetin?

What you have done is what is expected from somebody that actually earned his professorial title and not our "Toronto" Professors. Fairness is demanded of you and you did not fail, that does not mean that you have given OBJ adminstration a pass mark, on the overall assessment you have assessed him as "failed" But my people love to see more than that, they will love to see you descend on him by abusing his father and his mother, even curse the day he was born. Yeye dey boom


The part of your contribution that I did not agree with is the area holding him responsible for whatever happens to his achievements when he is no longer in control.

He can only act his part and leave. There is nothing anybody can do to ensure permanence of anything.

There is nothing he could have done to make any of his achievements irreversible, we have seen how a guy he hand-picked and rigged in as a President has reversed almost everything he did at the twilight of his administration.

We can only judge him by what he did and not what happened to what he did after he is no longer there.


I also do not agree with you that OBJ administration had the largest revenue in Nigeria history.

Gowon and Shagari's government had better income to population ratio in their days, with nothing at all to show for it.

Factoring in the inflationary indices, Oil was selling at a higher rate than it is selling today during Sgagari's years. @ $41-$42 a barrel, in 1981 that was a lot of money. The population of Nigeria at that time stood at less than two-third of what it is today.

Gowon's year witnessed the oil boom, when the population of Nigeria stood at one-third of what it is today.
He even confessed that our problem was not money but what to do with it.

Our history has not been short of short-sighted leaders. Obasanjo achieved more than these two administrations combined.

I cannot point to a single achievement of Gowon or Shagari's administration.

Let the truth be told.

[Bolaji Aluko]

tonsoyo:

I appreciate your response - and kind words.

But I have fours issues to point out to you:

1. About the reversal of one's achievements after being gone. I remind you of Jesus who accused someone of building his house upon sand, and when the rains fell, etc., it came tumbling down, while the other person built his house upon a rock and it stood firm. By your argument, Jesus Christ should not have blamed the first person? After all, he achieved a building, n'est ce pas?

2. Concerning oil revenues. Motivated by you, I have just done a quick calculation of MAXIMUM earnings during the Gowon (military; 1 Aug 1966 - 29 Jul 1975; highest annual average per barrel price was $27), Shagari (civilian; 1 Oct 1979 - 31 Dec 1983; highest annual average per barrel price was $66.20) and Obasanjo (civilian; May 29, 1999 - May 29, 2007; highest annual average per barrel price was $58.30) aadministrations, all INDEXED to 2006 US dollars (that is correcting for inflation since 1960 actually), and here is my calculation:

Gowon .....$76.42 billion
Shagari.....$127.89 billion
Obasanjo...$239.62 billion

I shall show the full calculations in an upcoming essay - these were based on CRUDE production, not export, hence I quote them as MAXIMUM EARNINGS. [Obasanjo's figure even ends at 2006; not May 2007. The IBB years calculations (not shown here) are less than Obasanjo's because in general production rate was less.]

So even after correcting for population, Obasanjo still seems to have earned MORE than any other head of state in Nigeria's history.

3. With respect to Gowon, I can point out three achievements:

(i) winning the civil war with uncharacteristic post-bellum charity;

(ii) spending good money on infrastructure and education. Those of us who went through secondary and university education during from 1966 to the late 70s know what I am talking about. We had it looking up.

(iii) the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC.) That is a good legacy that is now being tarnished - but it got institutionalized.

4. Finally, I agree with you: I cannot point to any redeeming feature of the Shagari "locust" years despite so much money in such a short time - and the highest average annual revenue rate in Nigeria's history so far.


I rest my case.

Best wishes.


Bolaji Aluko

[Mikky jaga]

Prof Aluko,

I will never stop admiring your dexterity with facts and figures. I am realy impressed.

I hope some fellows here will not call that "arse licking" though.

Obasanjo is a failure: only Tonsoyo and his brother Paul Adujie before him can recall any of his "achievements".