Bullet in the buttocks

Obasanjo

By Sam Omatseye

“Therefore, you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things,” Romans 2:1

The Owu chief had a first life, and it was not as a soldier, a politician, or, obviously, even a head of state. In Ohi Alegbe’s interview with his first wife for African Concord decades ago, she taunted Olusegun Obasanjo as a “bush man because his favorite food is pounded yam and bush meat.” But that is not the story that often haunts me about the man. It is the picture of a soldier on the run. It was vivid in a passage in The tragedy of Victory authored by Alabi Isama – Obasanjo’s nemesis.

During the Civil War, Obj had taken over from Benjamin Adekunle, alias Black Scorpion, as the Commander of the Third Marine Commando, and he went on an inspection in the battlefield. Biafran soldiers opened fire. Obj fled for his life but not before a bullet hit him on the buttocks. The bullet had the mercy of altitude, or the fear of height. It sailed low below his waist. Maybe because Obj looks more shrunken than tall. They say, the higher you go, the cooler it becomes. The bullet reversed the maxim. If the bullet had soared, it might have taken a fatal course. Shall we thank the Biafran soldier for his failure as a marksman? Lieutenant Colonel Iluyomade was a witness and confirmed it to me in an interview.

Well, Obj had always lived a charmed life and benefitted where he did not labour. After all, he did not want to fight in the war. When Alani Akinrinade and others suggested to Gowon that he take over from Adekunle, he said in Yoruba, “You want them to kill me in battle?” He might have ruminated over it as the bullet made a tent of his bottom flesh. Yet, he takes credit for the victory. Even though when Biafra surrendered, he knew nothing about the firestorms in the battlefront. The guns rested, Akinrinade invited him to glory, to sign the documents on behalf of the federal army. He became a war hero.

That was Obj the craven. He abides contradictions of the lower sort. He evinced it last week when he spoke at the Chinua Achebe Lecture at Yale University. First, the organisers gave no jewel to the bard’s memory. Achebe was no Obj fan, and, as Bayo Onanuga stated, he rejected his award while president. In his statement from his abode at Bard College, Achebe lashed out at Obj for turning “my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the presidency.” Obj accused President Tinubu’s era, among other things, of chaos and insecurity. Achebe ribbed him over the chaos and insecurity in the country, with special focus on Anambra State when he played godfather, unseated a constitutionally elected governor in Ngige, and reveled in its hysteria of success.

In my column in The Sun newspaper of October 24, 2004, I wrote: “The Achebe of compromise was not the one we saw in the past week. It was the Achebe of unflinching righteous indignation, an Okonkwo abandoning Obierika and reaching for the jugular.” As I noted in my TVC Breakfast show comment, Achebe would scream in his grave to see Obj exploit a platform in his name.

Where did Obj get the moral authority to attack the president, when he was a failure writ large for history. He also listed other Tinubu sins; “conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence and underdevelopment.” He capped it by calling for the sack of INEC boss Mahmood Yakubu. The paradox is that he is more guilty of all these than any leader, perhaps except IBB. On INEC Chief, did he not anoint Iwu’s skullduggery as electoral umpire? So much so, he was renamed Iwuruwuru. Did he fire him? a tear for OBJ.

His long list of Tinubu sins is repetitive. But let us afford him the benefit of nuanced wisdom and accept that ‘conflict’ and ‘discord’ post subtle differences. For conflict, did he not singlehandedly remove a party chairman Audu Ogbe at his home with military-style, or Ngige-style bullying? That was in Ogbe’s home after a sumptuous pounded yam meal served by the woman of the house. For discord, where did the phrase “do or die” come from? It was 2007, and he said it in Ajegunle Lagos because he wanted to “capture” Lagos. When he lost, he told INEC not to announce the results that everyone knew Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) had won. The announcer kept the result for over 24 hours and the whole country waited with bated breath. It was security operatives, especially Nuhu Ribadu, who warned him not to overturn Lagos result or the city would burn. Hence, he yielded. The victory cemented Asiwaju’s image as “the last man standing.” We can see where the man’s malice was brewed.

For division, can we forget how he capsized the houses of assemblies in Plateau, Bayelsa, Ekiti, and impeached governors without following the law with as few as six men? Lalong as a speaker spent 40 days and 40 nights in Lagos detention as chronicled in my book of that title. Is the Edo State House situation not his legacy of impunity? The phrase “overheating the polity” ceased after he quit office. I wonder what he meant by ‘depression?’ Did he mean sad? What would have made people sadder than most Nigerians lived on less than a dollar a day on his watch. Even at that, he spent billions of dollars to pay debts when our poor could not have one dollar. In my column for The Sun on December 5, 2004, I wrote: “That’s why he (Obasanjo) should teach the rest of the country as the baba of the land the reason his farm is fruitful and the nation cannot say so of itself.” What a genius. Or when he spent $16 billion on power but darkness persisted? That money could have restored our power infrastructure.

Did he not call our teaching hospitals centres of excellence? Only mortuaries excelled. On youth restiveness, could he stop the Niger Delta ferment? No. It was Umar Yar’ Adua, who cast oil on their spirits. Confusion? What of his third term? He wanted to remain Nigeria’s baba till death. Can we forget the savagery of Odi and Zaki Biam? His defiance of the courts? What of the harvest of deaths and assassinations during his presidency? In the polls in Ondo and Edo, no death was recorded. In OBJ’s time, cemeteries had great appetites. He is the patriarch in Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, who destroys everything he touches.

Obj has been angry for a long time. Hence, he must pull down every leader after him. He has spared none, civilian or military. Before that, he wrote My Command to diminish all the war commanders and lionise only himself as the good soldier. He was called PHD in the 1980’s, meaning Pull Him Down syndrome. He has not changed. He is guilty of what Yoruba call Kenimani. Only I should have.

If he wanted to critique the Tinubu policies, the earthy fellow is welcome, but he did not do it. He should have analysed the economic policies, his tax policies, his job programme and his fight for local government autonomy. That is maturity. Rather, he went the same way of the Civil war, of allowing himself to be shot in the butt.

The Nation Newspaper Ltd.