Sixty-fifth birthday fireworks: Obasanjo versus Fayose (I)

IT was a surprise to me that Peter Ayodele Fayose, former governor of Ekiti state, invited former President Olusegun Obasanjo to his birthday bash! Trust me, Fayose must have been up to something, but as it turned out, Obasanjo, the wily fox himself, upended him! A miserable Fayose was then left with nothing but to play the catch-up game with his “Thank you” message, laced with insults, to the former president. Sixty-five is not a landmark and Obasanjo is not a particularly welcome guest at the corridors of power these days. Fayose, on his own personal recognition and also on the ticket of his friend, Nyesom Wike, the FCT Minister, should be a more welcome guest at the Presidential Villa than OBJ himself. To every rule there is an exception, but the generality of Nigerian politicians hardly does anything without having a gain in sight; so, what gain did Fayose seek to benefit from OBJ gracing his birthday? Or is this Karma at work? Surprises, they say, never end! Fayose left no stone unturned to ensure that Obasanjo attended. He sent one emissary after another. Fayose personally visited Obasanjo. Fayose also sent transport money, the one our youths call T-fare, to facilitate the former president’s presence!

With OBJ agreeing to attend, I knew mischief was afoot! If Fayose can easily forget what he suffered at the hands of Obasanjo as Nigeria’s president and commander-in-chief, will OBJ, whom some say never forgives, forgive and forget all the insults Fayose hauled at him at every turn? I have said it before: Gen. JJ Oluleye, a contemporary of Obasanjo, told me OBJ has equal capacity to do both good and evil; the dilemma, he added, is, you never can tell when or on what account he will do either good or evil.

OBJ is an enigma. When, in January 2018, Nigeria’s Open University awarded him a Ph.D. in Theology, critics said it was unnecessary since he already has a more famous, even if controversial, PHD in the kitty, if you understand what they mean! They referred to his accounts of the civil war – My Command – where he appeared as the sole hero of the war; his pull-him-down letter to virtually every Nigerian leader; his “the best candidate may not win this election” statement before the 1979 presidential election (interpreted by many to refer to Chief Obafemi Awolowo); and his jabs in the heat of protests against the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election that MKO Abiola, the winner of the election, was not the Messiah Nigerians needed! We can go on and on!

Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician and inventor, was the one who said, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the world.” For reasons best known to him, Fayose gave OBJ such a place penultimate Saturday and the wily fox did not disappoint! He not only moved the crowd, but he also seized the stage and changed the narrative. OBJ put Fayose and his wife on the spot. OBJ carefully picked his words! He must have practised hard for the occasion. Judging by the trademark mischievous grin that danced on his lips, OBJ must have felt on top of the world seeing the “enfant terrible” in a cage. If you really knew Fayose, he cut a pitiable sight that night as he waffled his legs and shuffled his hands, while an amused OBJ fired on all cylinders, with no-holds-barred and pulling no punches! For OBJ, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to scoop his pound of flesh from Ayo Fayose and Obasanjo seized it with both hands! And who do you blame: An OBJ who chanced upon the footprints of the Yoruba proverbial mad man and ruthlessly scooped them or a Fayose who – again, for reasons best known to him – offered himself to OBJ for dinner on a platter?

The cost-benefit analysis of OBJ cutting short his stay in Rwanda to grace Fayose’s birthday bash couldn’t have been that Fayose was that important in OBJ’s reckoning. It wasn’t a show of love, either! OBJ’s motive was something else! Dangote reportedly sent a plane to ferry OBJ from Rwanda. Paul Kagame, despite being a sit-tight leader who has been in office since 2000, is the poster boy of Western imperialism. It was in this same Kigali that OBJ, not long ago, reportedly conducted an opinion poll of a handful of people outside his hotel accommodation and returned a verdict that Kagame could rule forever! The information that Dangote sent a plane to ferry OBJ from Kigali may appear innocuous, but interrogated, you begin to understand the inter-connectivity and networking that make things that appear simple on the surface really complex. What works beautifully elsewhere fails fantastically here. As my people would say, when you pull “gburu” and “gburu” pulls the entire forest, you are compelled to let go!

Some faulted OBJ for dragging Fayose in public the way he did; they are right! Since OBJ recited Yoruba proverbs at the event, I will remind him of a few other words of Yoruba elders that say: “Ibi agba l’a n ba ’gba”; Agba ki ns’oro bi ewe”; “Obe o ki n jininuagba”; “Gbogbo aso kol’a n sa ninuoorun”; “Bi omode ba n se bi omode, agba a si maa se bi agba”; etc.

Fayose behaved like a typical Yoruba ‘Omoluwabi” when he kept mum while OBJ rained his tirades on him, but he missed it when he later responded with his own “Thank You” insults. Some have said: “Epe l’a fi n wo epe”; Omo ina l’a n ran si ina”; and “Nitori were ita l’a fi n ni were inu ile”. Two of a kind! Yes, that, too, is right!

But medicine after death! If he was minded to respond, Fayose ought to have done so there and then – in my own opinion! In Ogho (Owo) where I come from, anyone who did what Fayose did would get the spanking of a lifetime! They are called “Oma-a-yu’li-ya-gb’esi-wa”! Must you first go home to consult before returning with an appropriate response to an insult pinned on you in public, in the full glare of all?

Permit me to say this: OBJ’s exposition on Fayose went too far! Fayose’s response went too low! None of it dignifies the Yoruba norms, culture, customs, traditions and civilisation that they both purport to embrace. Who benefits from the spat between these two illustrious sons of Yoruba land? Detractors of the Yoruba race, of course!

Between 2016 and 2018, during the second coming of Fayose as the governor of Ekiti state, I was at the head of a group which spent sleepless nights interviewing the governor for his autobiography, titled “Peter the Rock: Autobiography of Dr. Peter Ayodele Fayose” (Unpublished). I edited the 129-page book. This is what Fayose said of Obasanjo in the book:

“I was so close to Obasanjo that I was one of the governors labelled as ‘Obasanjo Boys.’ I left no stone unturned just to demonstrate and exhibit loyalty to Obasanjo, which made Obasanjo himself appoint me as chairman of a presidential search committee for a successor when his third term bid hit the rock. It was particularly on this issue of third term that some of us were termed ‘Obasanjo Boys.’ For me, loyalty is sine qua non and I took it even personally. Compare it to someone who is madly in love; struck, as it were, by Cupid’s arrow. That was the kind of undiluted loyalty that I had for President Obasanjo, who visited Ekiti on the 18th of June, 2006 and left on the 19th. He had been in Ekiti a year earlier, in 2005, to commission a number of projects, commending my efforts on infrastructural development of the state.

“I was also praised to high heavens when he visited in 2006. I remember he sang a song: ‘Omo o le jo baba, ka maa b’inu omo/Omo o le jo baba ka maa b’inu omo/Fayose jo baba e ju/Omo o le jo baba ka maa b’inu omo.’ That song says I am his godson who took very much after him in performance and good governance. He appealed to everyone to support me, saying he had no objection to my second term in office.

“In a normal democratic system, a governor would probably not need the president’s nod to serve his term or win re-election. I am saying this for the benefit of future generations so they may learn useful lessons from how we play up sentiments over and above our institutions and how the relationship between president and governor became that of headmaster/pupil. We must understand how a debased system evolved out of this style of governance in our country. Refuse to key-in and work within the political framework operating at a particular period and get consumed – and I was, indeed, consumed!

“I was an ‘Obasanjo Boy’ who was ready to bend over backward to please him and avoid the kind of crisis that took me out of office. Eventually, however, what I feared most happened to me.

“After Obasanjo’s first visit to Ekiti in 2005 and the subsequent failure of his third-term agenda, he again visited in June 2006. The third term agenda was an attempt by Obasanjo to perpetuate himself in office beyond the two terms of four years each stipulated by the Constitution. We were enlisted to be foot soldiers for that agenda. However, it failed and I remember that the agenda was killed by the National Assembly after Obasanjo’s return from the United States of America. He then gave up the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, whom he had earlier vowed never to give up. America wanted Taylor desperately and had to appeal to Obasanjo’s selfishness: America also got Obasanjo to concede Bakassi to Cameroon because there had been a judgment before then given by the International Court of Justice at The Hague, which Nigeria did not respect. While Obasanjo was still in America, he instructed that Bakassi be conceded because he wanted the concurrence of America for his third term agenda. The then president of the United States of America, George Bush, leveraged the desperation of Obasanjo to pressure him to give up Charles Taylor and Bakassi peninsula in exchange for the United States’ support for Obasanjo’s third term bid. However, the third term bid was killed by the National Assembly while Obasanjo was still in the United States.

NEXT WEEK: How Obasanjo ditched his friend, Chief SK Babalola, for Fayose; the role played by Chief Olabode George, former PDP chairman, retired Col. Ahmadu Ali of the 1978 Ali-Must-Go Nigerian university students’ protests, among others.