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 coming from. The exceptional philosopher Baruch Spinoza in his classic work Ethics gives us an insight on how helpless we can be with nature- our human nature inclusive. We can hardly change our nature even as much as we would want. Here is a man whom his daughter told the world "is a megalomaniac" in a classic letter on his father and whom another moral gaint Gani Fawehimni-Nigeria's own Mandela has called "the most corrupt Nigerian"(see Watching the Watcher by Yinka Odumankin for details).

Even if Obasanjo is not the most financially corrupt Nigeria he may have nobody to compete with on political corruption. The 2007 election he presided over (among other political executions, still stands in living Nigerian memories as the most shameless political sham executed in the name of democracy).

Do these designations mean anything to Obasanjo? I doubt. He rather has a gullible, morally weak and intellectually feeble society before him, so he ignores all these; and keeps playing a moral leader from nowhere. He has Nigeria where his character suits best and functions optimally and he applies it to his advantage masquerading his ego at the slightest instance.

I should also think Obasanjo came to Abia state for I know not what, meeting the wrong Igbos-who are not well positioned to tell him the truth, to discuss Nigeria!

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

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

For a very critical mind Obasanjo can only compete with Lamidu Adedibu for weight and worth and if we want to itemize those who governed the lives and destinies of millions in Nigeria but cannot be said to have moral credentials that would have voted them to govern a Local Government Area in very civilised democracies then Obasanjo easily stands prominent among them.



L.Ogbo Ugwuanyi,Ph.D






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:
1. He could have repented of past wilful errors and turned a new leaf.
2. 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.
3. 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,
Cornelius
We 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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