20 MINUTES WITH OBASANJO

It’s been four weeks since this column last appeared on these pages. Four weeks of unprecedented political drama that oscillates between horror and tragedy, with occasional comic relief. The country pretty much shut down, and remains so even now, more or less.

It’s impossible to be a Nigerian and not be oppressed by the pervasive anxiety of the moment, no matter where you reside on planet earth. I was in Saudi Arabia along with about 80,000 other Nigerians for this year’s Muslim pilgrimage, when suddenly rumour started circulating wildly that our president, never the healthiest of people in the best of times, had been brought to the Holy Land half-dead.

Later the rumour was upgraded to the final but familiar level: President Umaru Musa Yar’adua was dead! I don’t know how, and I don’t know why; but this rumour, rather making people excited produced the best of all possible reactions: a resolution that we should all take advantage of our being in the Holy Land to pray for the president and for our country—or vice versa. Just pray, everyone, was the salient resolve among every group of Muslims I’ve met.  In quick succession two facts were established; that the president was not dead, and that the rumour originated from Nigeria. As usual.

Back in Nigeria one meets a country full of gloom, in every sense of the word. The long queues for fuel in the federal capital Abuja says it all; it was like the long eerie-looking body of a giant serpent with injured head. On the political front clever rats, stupid rats, cockroaches and crabs were busy doing their things, but in general everyone was taking advantage of the situation. Most of them, predictably, decided to take the politically correct way out: they call for prayers for the president by day, and by night seek out Vice President Goodluck Jonathan and let it be known that in the event he was looking for a loyal deputy, or even a Man Friday, they are very much available.

Clearly the Divinely-determined tenure of Yar’adua as Nigeria’s President, as against his constitutionally-determined tenure, is up. Power is lying on the floor and tigers, hawks, lions and even rats are circling, and sizing up each other, aiming to make a desperate grab. It was in the context of this obvious vacuum, that I met former President Olusegun Obasanjo one-on-one on Tuesday, December 22, 2009, for about 20 minutes.

You would probably imagine that 20 minutes is a very short time with anybody, and you are correct. But not if you view it within certain critical parameters: one is that we are in a transition, the origin of which was conceived and delivered, warts and all, by Obasanjo himself.

Secondly, from the number one to the number three citizens of the country, they are all in various ways beholden to Obasanjo. Now that the first citizen is about to bow out, the first and second citizens in line for succession are unlikely to ignore their mentor’s interest in whatever decision that is eventually arrived at. Three, Obasanjo is the Chairman of Board of Trustees (BOT) of the ruling party, the PDP. This body either determines, or ratifies every important decision of the party. Last but not least Obasanjo has made sure that he has either destroyed (as in the case of his former Vice Atiku Abubakar), neutralized (think Tony Anenih), or demystified (think IBB) every possible threat to his political dominance in the country.

When you add up all these together, you can but reach only one conclusion: Obasanjo, by a wide margin, is the single most powerful politician in Nigeria today. If ever Nigeria had a kingmaker, he is ‘it’. One only needs to be around Obasanjo these days to appreciate the kind of power and influence that the old man still wields.

I met him at the Yar’adua centre. Obasanjo flew into Abuja that Tuesday morning to honour the memory of an old associate, the late Abubakar Koko, who died in 2004. The family of the late Koko was launching his post-humous biography that day at the Yar’adua conference centre and Obasanjo was the chairman of the occasion. That he considered the occasion worthy of his presence was one of those rare qualities of Obasanjo that his critics never appreciated.

When the event was over Obasanjo moved into his private office in the building; following him were a retinue of people: serving, former and aspiring ministers, governors and party big wigs, including the secretary of the PDP BOT, and former governor of Nasarawa state, Abdullahi Adamu.  There were also diplomats and businessmen. A few of us were allowed through the security cordon that led to his office.

When it was my turn to see him, I decided to merely request for an appointment at a more convenient time, this was because he never gave any of the people he saw more than three minutes because he said he had to rush back to Otta. Basically I wanted to ask Obasanjo only one question: now that we are where we are, and he is where he is, what would he do next?

I don’t think anybody is capable of extracting an answer to that question from Obasanjo; and a premature introduction of that topic might well foreclose any possibility of any future discussion. So I listened to him say what he wanted to say instead.

“I understand you are a journalist…” he started. OBJ has never hidden his disdain for journalists; and so I nodded my head cautiously. “I believe that time takes care of everything” he went on. “For instance I can tell you that most issues concerning the civil war have been taken care of by time. But the impact of our regime and my own legacy in the last ten years are yet to be settled. But one thing I’ve always known is that a comparison between us and those that come after us must be made; I’ve always known that that comparison would be made…”

Without any prompting, Baba also spoke about the power sector and it was obvious that this was the most sensitive issue close to his heart. “It took me three years to get to the root of the power sector problem in this country. I put Agagu there, and we decided that we needed to make huge investments in that sector annually for several years. By the time I left we were generating about 4000MW.

But what do we have today?…” Apparently if Baba had any problem with Yar’adua it must be in the way the later has handled the issue of the power sector. From this one could glean two things: the fact that Obasanjo was for the first time making reference to comparison between his regime and Yar’adua’s; and also his obvious dissatisfaction over the power sector controversy suggests that the relationship between mentor and pupil has not been a very rosy one.

Eventually, when I had the chance to put in a question, I decided to be as diplomatic as I could. Baba’s anger is legendary and he had already accommodated me for more time than he had accorded any of his other visitors. So I said to him: “In 1979 you handed over power to Shagari, a northerner and against the background of controversial election result; in 2007 you also vigorously campaigned for and in the end handed over power to Umaru Yar’adua, another northerner. Did you ever feel betrayed?”

“I never dealt with people on the basis of where they come from. I didn’t see what I did as doing it to the North or for the North. I did what I did because of my belief that it was the best thing to do in the interest of the country. We must do everything we can to secure the future of this country for people like you. All those people like Abubakar Koko, or Ahmed Joda are they my tribesmen? My basic belief is that as a Nigerian I could have been born in anywhere, in the East or North, but instead I happen to be born in a small village in Ogun state; that is not my doing, it is the Will of God…”  Unfortunately at that instant Bashir Koko, son the celebrant and deputy managing director of LNG popped in to say that a group of Malams from Kebbi had been waiting to pray for Obasanjo and they were billed to return back to Kebbi that day. Then somebody else walked in to say that the Chinese Ambassador had also been waiting; this is in addition to other big-wigs that I left out there in the waiting room.

So the interaction had to end, but he said “I think we should continue this discussion at another time”.

I hope there would be another time. But in the meantime, it is impossible not to notice the excitement in and around OBJ; most of the people who swarm around him that day didn’t come to ask after his health, but to register their loyalty; they know that whatever situation the present crisis crystallizes into, so long as he is alive Obasanjo holds not one, but several Aces. More than any other people, the beneficiaries of power in the North would be hoping that he does not play any of those Aces against.