The trouble with Obasanjo’s wish, By Azu Ishiekwene

I’m sure he was expecting a firestorm. As usual, he was primed and released to explode in his own time and season. If former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s letter endorsing Peter Obi of the Labor Party has been ignored, uncriticized, and unanswered, then the letter is not Obasanjo’s letter.

The letter had barely gone in when the All Progressives Congress (APC), the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and, in fact, the Presidency all attacked, with the PDP being the mildest.

Whatever the apprehensions of those affected, I believe most can agree on the main message: young people make up 65 percent of Nigeria’s population and, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), 76.5 percent of the newly registered nine million . voters, will play an important role in the upcoming general elections.

Those who were only eleven years old when President Muhammadu Buhari, who promised change, was elected only to witness #Endsars six years later when the President is in the first year of his second term, are now of voting age. And those who are registered will vote for the first time, if they do not participate in the “japa wave” that is sweeping the country.

It evokes memories of the “Andrew check-out” era of the 1980s. However, if you have seen the lines at any of the embassies in Lagos or Abuja lately – the lines spilling out onto the sidewalks and main roads from behind the large iron gates and turnstiles manned by enormous private embassy security men, against a desperate, frustrated young face. – then you’ll realize that what we have on our hands today is worse than the Andrews of the 1980s.

It was Andrew plus a mini-exodus election after 1993 annulled, only more gifted and determined than the two combined. It is Obasanjo’s hope that the anger, rage and frustration of #Endsars and the current economic difficulties will turn into an electoral wave that will sweep away the old order.

Affected parties also know that Obasanjo’s target – the registered remnants who are not yet in the “Japanese wave”, who are curious, generally agnostic, adventurous and unscrupulous – may play an important role in this election.

Apart from being the largest vote bank in the country, three regions – North-West, South-West and South-South – currently have the largest concentration of this youth population. According to records from the National Population Commission (NPC), five states – Kano (3.4 million); Lagos (2.7 million); Oyo (1.7 million); Kaduna (2.1 million); and Rivers States (1.8 million) – have the highest youth population between the ages of 20 and 34 among the top 10 in Nigeria.

Another problem that Obasanjo correctly identified was the scale, scope and complexity of the work required to take Nigeria from the brink. With inflation at 23 percent; youth unemployment at 33 percent; scarcity of foreign exchange; reduced production and receipts from oil sales; and the looming debt crisis, even Obasanjo’s worst critics can agree that Buhari seems to have used up his successor’s honeymoon.

Then, what is the problem with Obasanjo’s letter? Of course, he has the right to vote and his opinion which, despite its weight, is not always of consequence in all elections.

Apart from 1979, when the military government that foisted Shehu Shagari in the country, MKO Abiola won in 1993; and Buhari in 2019, both despite him. And even though he was a candidate, he lost badly in his own state and his southwestern backyard in 1999, only to win the region in a do-or-die subterfuge four years later.

Hair-splitting this time did not exceed the value of Obasanjo’s election. What is left has been consumed by ego, meddling and lust for power which is hardly enough to win the decisive vote in Totoro / Soroki Ward 11, even if he is on the ballot today.

It seems that some people are concerned not with Obasanjo’s right of choice or advocacy, but what he could have done, early on, to make it easier to pave the way for an Igbo president.

As president for eight years, Obasanjo strongly rejected suggestions to help restructure the country, which would have given the region, especially the South-East, a fairer footing and created a more equitable and inclusive federal system.

An inseparable man, he craved power for himself and spared no expense to get it, so Obasanjo invested at least $500 million in the ghost third term project, according to Chidi Odinkalu and Ayisha Osori in their book, Too good to die for.

It is a measure of the complexity of the beast we call man, that the PDP, the party where Obasanjo was alpha and omega for eight years – and apparently still – cannot pave the way for the Igbo presidency. APC, the Siamese of PDP, is getting worse. Ironically, the Labor Party, the child of political necessity that Obasanjo’s origins and ancestors sought to crush, has produced the foundation of his new love.

During his presidency, the South-East suffered a significant infrastructural decline, while he raised a privileged small class to manage the conjugation area or disrupt the political crisis. Not once, not twice, but thrice, he pushed the Igbo Senate president (including Chuba Okadigbo) who had a mind of his own. However, they were lucky.

The chairman of the Onitsha branch of the NBA, Barnabas Igwe and his wife, were killed in what is suspected to be a politically motivated killing – a bloody record, which not only spread across the South East, but up and down the country, claimed. next to Obasanjo is of course his friend and Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Bola Ige. The killers are still at large.

If Obasanjo had less appetite for power, less control and less desire to be the only cock in the environment to crow about, the deadly ferment in Igboland today which is the result of injustice might have been curtailed. Moreover, the region is now locked in the politics of self-mutilation and fratricidal violence to air grievances, perhaps having an easier path to power.

Obi, who was first tapped by Obasanjo as Atiku Abubakar’s running mate in 2019, once again deserves Obasanjo’s support and deserves it. But what Obasanjo is offering is not support; it is almost five and a half decades too late, self-interested redemption disguised as patriotism; it is worse than the Greek gift.

It is a gift with history. And the young man to whom the letter speaks may well be remembered. It is true as stated in the letter that he became the military head of state at the age of 39 and General Yakubu Gowon at the age of 33. If you want to know how much Obasanjo loved the youth in his heyday, ask those who witnessed “Ali-Must -Go” ” student protest in 1978.

The protest by students against the increase in school fees at the time, remains one of the most brutally repressed in the history of student protests, the foreshadow of #Endsars. But that’s not all.

A year before Ali-Must-Go, “unknown soldiers” burned down, also, a youth shelter, Kalakuta Fela Republic, and beat the residents with rifle butts and iron bars. Fela’s mother, Olufunmilayo, was dragged by her hair and thrown out of the window. He survived the fall, but died on impact.

And for those who are too blind to see the oppression they are doing clearly, Obasanjo’s military regime sent some offshore, to an Island 100 km off the coast of Lagos, called Ita-Oko, where critics of the military regime are imprisoned. This is a place of indifference, interestingly, Buhari not only retained, but increased when he seized power in a military coup four years after Obasanjo handed over to a civilian government.

All this hardly detracts from Obasanjo’s incredible international record, his appetite for the limelight and, of course, his love of drama. Or indeed their right to suggest who they think is best to lead Nigeria. If the superior candidate does not think that he is still important, then he will not belittle him and give him support for his ego. They don’t have tantrums now. Obasanjo was exactly where he wanted.

Young people can be fooled, but not old people who see Obasanjo as a leader, in and out of uniform, on the farm, on the podium, and in their homes. If Obi knows Obasanjo as I think he does, my unsolicited suggestion is that he should read the former president’s letter of approval to the end. Somewhere there, in small print, he’ll find the words: “Buyer Beware!”

Azu Ishiekwene is the Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP.