Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Obasanjo's Hypocrisy in the Era of Change

I think it is better to have pity on an Obasanjo personality given the insight about where he is comming from.The exceptional philosopher Baruch Spinoza in his classic work Ethics gives us an emabarrasing insight on how helpless we can be with nature- our nature.Here is a man whom his daughter truthfully and saintfully told the world "is a megalomanaic" in a classic letter on his father and whom another moral Saint Gani Fawehimni-Nigeria's own Mandela has called "the most corrupt Nigerian"(see Watching the Watcher by Yinka Odumankin for details).But do these mean anything to Obasanjo? He rather has a gullible, morally weak and intellectually feeble society before him, so he ignores all these; and keeps disturbing the peace of everybody around.He has Nigeria where his character suits best and functions optimally and he applies it to his advantage mascrading his ego at every slighest instance.

I should also think he came to Abia state for I know not what!

To blur the truth and obstuct the memory is a good strategy for moral dwarfs in their dealings with society.

Could it be that Obasanjo foresees a possiblity that the hunt after those who stole Nigeria's wealth may locate him and is cleverly trying to divert the attention of the public from his side? I am just thinking loud!


For a critical mind Obasanjo can only compete with Lamidu Adedibu for weight and worth and the man who could not have governed a Local Governemnt in a civilised world but wants to be known for everything good may be nothing close to what he thinks of himself in the end.


L.Ogbo Ugwuanyi,Ph.D





--------------------------------------------
On Wed, 1/27/16, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Obasanjo's Hypocrisy in the Era of Change
To: "USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Cc: USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Wednesday, January 27, 2016, 5:15 PM



This is meant to be serious and on
the level:

Re- "he shamelessly impersonated a
moral sage. He passed
himself off as a moral icon and, like true exemplars of
virtue and ethical"

We have to be cautious about passing
final judgement on the Brother
Obasanjo of today for three reasons:

He
could have repented of past wilful errors and
turned a new leaf.From his point of view
and from St. Paul's too, "for
all have sinned and fallen short of God's
glory" ( "All" of course includes
me, you,  Buhari, and even the future
Ochonus
that flesh is heir to. The very fact that General
Obasanjo
is pursuing doctoral studies in Divinity
should be sufficient testimony of
his seriousness and we are to take it as for granted that it
is on that ecclesiastical
platform, standing on the new pillars of moral rectitude
that he was delivering
his homilies,  so ardently and with
such
authority. Next stage he might even enter the priesthood –
and you cannot then forever
go on referring to  or reminding him
of his
military and political past  The above is not
an apology on his behalf or
for any past or future misdemeanours on his part… Sincerely said,CorneliusWe Sweden



















On Wednesday,
27 January 2016 16:19:32 UTC+1, MEOc...@gmail.com
wrote:
















 

 

Obasanjo's
Hypocrisy in the Era of "Change"

 

By Moses E.
Ochonu

 

 

This is a
season of change. It is
also a season of rank hypocrisy. Politicians who supervised
previous regimes of
corruption and perfidy have been emboldened by the change
slogan of the moment
to stake their rehabilitation on a pretended fondness for
ethical and moral
rectitude. Change, it seems, is being equated with the
proverbial scriptural
blood that washes away a multitude of sins. No one
epitomizes the spirit of times,
this ascendance of self-righteous hypocrisy, than former
president Olusegun
Obasanjo.

 

Chief
Obasanjo has been touring
the country with glee and sanctimonious pageantry. The other
day, he was in my
home state of Benue at the behest of Governor Samuel Ortom.
At a dinner organized
in his honor at which he was entertained and sartorially
rebranded in Benue
traditional attire, he shamelessly impersonated a moral
sage. He passed himself
off as a moral icon and, like true exemplars of virtue and
ethical discipline
who espouse, through sheer righteous charisma, the virtue of
altruism and
ethical infallibility, Obasanjo performed the role to a hilt
and with a passion
that can only come from overcompensation. He offered advice
to the governor on
using the resources of the state to improve the lot of the
citizens and on the
evil of misappropriating resources belonging to the people.


 

He has been
doing the same act at
other forums and in other states. When he is not on a
rostrum waxing
sanctimonious about how politicians and leaders have let
Nigerians down, he is
issuing statements lamenting how corruption has destroyed or
is destroying
Nigeria. Nigeria, Obasanjo has been saying in interviews and
speeches, is a
country hobbled by corruption.

 

Is he not one
of the politicians
who let Nigeria down? Was he not a two-time leader of
Nigeria who deserves, by
virtue of the multiple opportunities he had to positively
alter the course of
the country, the bulk of the blame for the problem he glibly
analyzes? These
questions would require some self-reflexivity to be
refracted back to Obasanjo.
Unfortunately, he lacks the capacity for reflection and
self-critique. And so
he persists in advertising himself as incapable of grasping
irony. He says past
governments (excluding his own?) have frittered away
Nigeria's opportunity for
greatness.

 

Now, he has
reinforced his
hypocritical repertoire. Of late, he has become a serial
writer of open letters,
missives that convey the moral chutzpah of a politician who
is deeply
implicated in the vice that he critiques. In furtherance of
his newfound
epistolary career, Obasanjo has penned a letter to the
National Assembly in
which he accuses the legislative body of
corruption.

 

Says the man
who became president
in 1999, his then protégé, el-Rufai, informed us, with
only 15,000 Naira in his
bank account and with his Otta farm in shambles but who left
the presidency in
2007 a multi-billionaire.

 

Says the man
who, if we believe
the testimony in el-Rufai's memoir, which is yet to be
disputed, asked his then
ministerial nominee, Mr. el-Rufai, to go to the vice
president, Atiku Abubakar,
to arrange the payment of a 60 Million Naira bribe to
legislators in exchange
for confirmation, a bribe that was subsequently paid from a
PDP slush account
with the full knowledge of Mr. Obasanjo.

 

Says the man
who as president
bought shares worth 600 million Naira in Transcorp, a firm
he set up and helped
to acquire several choice public assets for peanuts. Says
the man who now owns
a multi-billion Naira university, the richest and most
expansive farming empire
in Nigeria, and a presidential library complex funded by
those who were
contractors to his government or had benefitted from state
windfalls.

 

Says the man
who bribed
legislators with billions of Naira withdrawn illegally from
the Central Bank to
secure a third presidential term through a corrupt and
doomed constitutional
amendment process. Says the man under whose presidency 300
billion Naira
appropriated for federal road rehabilitation was transformed
into a reelection
bazaar under the supervision of then Works Minister, Tony
Anenih.

 

Says the man
under whose
superintending watch $10 Billion was wasted on power sector
projects that
yielded darkness and further deterioration in Nigeria's
electricity
infrastructure.

 

Says the man
who invented and
operationalized "do or die" as an electoral manifesto
and as a precursor to a
scorched earth philosophy of governance. Says the man whose
regime was known
characterized by high profile political assassinations that
many, including
Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, believe were traceable to
machinations in the PDP
to completely dominate the national political space by
snuffing out any
opposition to Obasanjo.

 

Says the man
who was caught red handed
transporting dollars on the presidential aircraft through
his then aide, Andy
Ubah. Says the man whose secretive corrupt dealings were
scandalously exposed
by Atiku Abubakar and Garba Shehu during the infamous
Atiku-Obasanjo political
feud, which morphed into mutual corruption revelations
concerning the use of
the PDTF as a personal and Party piggybank.

 

Says the man
whose only reaction
to the confession of two squabbling political allies that
they had conspired to
rig a gubernatorial election in Anambra State was to ask
them to go and settle
their differences.

 

Says the man
who owns the Green
Legacy Resort, Abeokuta, arguably the most prestigious and
expensive hotel/golf
resort in Nigeria.

 

Says the man
whose fingerprints
are all over the Halliburton bribery scandal and who was
spectacularly
implicated in sworn testimony and court records by convicted
British-American
bribe distributor, Jeffery Tessler.

 

It's
hardly Obasanjo's fault
though that he is now regarded as the conscience or moral
voice of Nigeria.
With such an amnesiac citizenry, even Hitler, were he to
come back from the
dead in Nigeria, would find himself on an accelerated path
to complete
redemption. That's just who we are as a people.


 

All Obasanjo
had to do was hop on
the change train for all to be forgiven. In truth he was
already well on his
way to total redemption before the change election.


 

The cover of
change has continued
not only to shield many of yesterday's thieves but to also
empower them with a
strange form of moral hubris. Obasanjo's hubristic
performances during his
ongoing national honor tour are a pointer to what's to
come in this genre.

 

At this rate
of national
forgetting, former President Jonathan needs only five years
to achieve full
rehabilitation and go on his own national anticorruption
speaking tour. But I
am reminded that his rehabilitation may have already begun
and he may have
already embarked on his own tour of moral pedagogy, given
the many pro-Jonathan
iconographies and textual material that flow through my
Facebook page everyday.
Again, that's just who we are.

 

In other
climes, when you commit
the kinds of crime committed by the likes of Obasanjo, good
gestures and deeds
done after the crime can only earn you a few privileges —
in prison! And a
reduced sentence if you are lucky. Not canonization as your
country's patron
saint of anticorruption, patriotism, and ethics.

 

But this is
Nigeria, a country of
notoriously short memories and a generous knack for offering
unearned
forgiveness to the villains of our national political
story.

 

 






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