One: OBJ’s antecedents speak clearly that he would publish and be damned once any incumbent president crosses the line, and the line for OBJ is the sanctity of Nigeria’s unity. While he usually uses government’s maltreatment of the people as a peg for his famous letters, his raison d’être is the need to preserve the country’s unity from assault. He has thus written letters to all presidents that have crossed the line – Shehu Shagari, whose bad governance and lackadaisical attitude are surpassed only by Buhari’s; Ibrahim Babangida, whose Structural Adjustment Programme OBJ condemned for not having “a human face”, and “Before it is too late” that he penned to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan. While OBJ’s political letters are usually all thrillers, it is debatable which can be described as the best seller.
Two: perhaps more than any president in Nigeria’s history, Buhari deserves his damning letter from Obasanjo. Not only has he been the worst leader in the country’s history, none has assailed Nigeria’s unity as Buhari. His type of clannishness and cronyism has never before been witnessed in this country and for a government on a self-appointed mission of cleansing the country’s Augean stable, the humongous corruption among his close circles beggars belief. When you add the horrendous and murderous activities of the Fulani herdsmen, the perfidy of Buharists who defend them, and the consenting silence of Buhari himself, like that of biblical Saul at the stoning to death of Stephen, Buhari’s administration becomes a nightmare that Nigerians hope they can quickly awake from.
OBJ’s letters are justified in every respect. Buhari deserves to receive OBJ’s letter and even more than the letter. Were it possible, this is a president that should immediately be yanked off the seat and carted away, not to Daura – for he does not deserve his life and liberties after he has allowed many others lose theirs – but to prison and, much more, the guillotines. There are two sets of people finding fault with the message on account of the pedigree of the messenger. The first are vile apologists of Buhari who are trying to be clever by half. Hiding under the guise that OBJ lacks the moral right to accuse others of what he himself is known to have been guilty of, they have sought to water down or wish away the weighty allegations OBJ levelled at Buhari. This set of apologists missed the point for many reasons.
One: A distinction must necessarily be made between the message and the messenger. Not doing so is akin to throwing the baby away with the birth water. The Christians among this group should read their bible and understand what it preaches. Jesus counselled that great care be taken to separate the wheat from the chaff. He did not say destroy both together. Two: OBJ said nothing new but only aggregated and ventilated the well-know and repeatedly canvassed views and positions of Nigerians across board. He only gave it voice and lent it his immense political stature. He may have other motives than the ones he openly disclosed – that is Obasanjo for you. Were that to be so, it still does not, and should not vitiate the essence of OBJ’s letter to Buhari. We shall soon return to that.
The second group of antagonists are those on whose toes OBJ had stepped in the past and who will never see anything good in the ex-president. It also includes those who received broadsides in OBJ’s letter to Buhari. In this group must also be positioned political leaders and those opposed to OBJ’s pet-project of a third force or coalition for Nigeria (CN). The duplicitous and deceitful streak in OBJ – as in other military officers of his calibre – came to the fore when he presented CN as an idea he was just broaching when, in actual fact, keen watchers of the political scene are aware that this new political formation had been in the works for more than one year.
Let me quickly say that I support a third force in the political affairs of this country where a two-party system has been sure recipe for dictatorship. We saw this in operation in the First Republic where a move towards consolidation from regionalism led to the impunity of those exercising “federal might”, eventually leading to the truncating of democracy and the Civil War. Since 1999, we have seen a similar movement, be it PDP or APC, where political operators gravitate to the dominant political party, thereby whittling down smaller parties and making a vibrant opposition impossible. Until we have smaller, vibrant parties, whether regional or issue-specific, and no single party is strong enough to win the presidency on its own, democracy is not likely to thrive here. Worse still, the country is not going to survive. The arrogance of Buhari, for instance, is the so-called 12 million votes he commands in the North; this is so because just one party has been dominant in that part of the country, be it NPC, NPN, PDP, and now APC. A third force, if it helps to dilute this stranglehold, will do the country a world of good.
A scenario which I foresee will play out as we approach 2019 is that OBJ’s third force will come out smoking; it may not win the presidency at the first trial but I can see them making an appreciable showing. It is incumbent on all true lovers of democracy to encourage and wish them well. For one, the third force is a clarion call on the other parties that are lethargic to come off their assumptions and work hard for their place in the hearts of Nigerians. I see the APC shedding weight, to put it mildly. A better assessment is that the ruling party may soon disintegrate into its legacy parties; things will fall apart and the falcons will no longer hear the falconer. For this, blame Buhari, who is also sure going to be the main loser, especially if he chooses to contest in 2019. Not only will the entire South be shut against him, he will also lose in the Middle Belt and a chunk of his traditional 12 million votes he will share with a vibrant third force. A million Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will not be able to rescue Buhari in the South-west this time around and the court jesters around him will be taken to the cleaners. For the safety of all and to arrest the impunity of the likes of Buhari and his cabals, no political party should henceforth be able to win the country’s presidency on first ballot. There must be a second ballot as we have witnessed in Ghana and Liberia and in other advanced democracies. This will enforce negotiations and horse-trading and not the winner-takes-all that has tended to concentrate power in the hands of a few individuals to the chagrin of other political actors. In 2019, I expect whatever remains of the APC after it must have unravelled; the PDP, and the third force to become the dominant political forces that will go into that election. I expect two of the three to enter the ring for a second ballot. The other smaller parties will then negotiate and decide where to swing the pendulum for the president to eventually emerge.
That is one option. Another option, which is silently gaining currency, is that, going by the atrocities that Nigerians have witnessed in a Fulani-dominated Buhari government; Nigerian voters should blacklist any Fulani presidential aspirant for some time to come. This is a discussion for another day.