What amazes me about Nigeria is why in spite of all the talents and geniuses the country has continued to produce in all walks of life, Nigeria still remains a poorly-led country with little or nothing to show for her God-given blessings in good weather, mineral resources, manpower, and diversity. One out of every 4 Africans is a Nigerian. There is strength in our cultural diversity, our land mass and population which places Nigeria on the cutting edge of power among African nations.
Nigeria was destined by God to be the land flowing with milk and honey, but the country is being held back and impoverished by very weak leadership and our failure to have and to elect selfless leaders like Nelson Mandela who places his nation’s interest above his own and was more than ready to lead by example by not preaching what he did not not practice like most of our leaders who are also in denial about the real state of things in our country. Hear Jonathan tell the world that Corruption is grossly exaggerated in Nigeria. Under his leadership and transformation agenda corruption has spread to all of the Nigerian embassies overseas. Right here in the Nigerian Consulate in New York getting your passport renewed used to take just one day under one Ibo ambassador. Today you will have to bribe your way to getting or renewing your passport and you may have to wait for a month or more as the consular staff tell you their Consulate is short of ink to print or their cameras have malfunctioned in the greatest city in the world where those items can be replaced for chicken change at Staples or any other stationery store in New York.
Nigerian leaders including Jonathan would be well advised to go read “MADIBA A to Z” – A profile of the many faces of Nelson Mandela authored by Danny Schechter.” I have just read the book from cover to cover. Once I started reading it I could not put it down until I finished it. The same Mandela has correctly analyzed the problems of Nigeria as caused by the heartless indifference and corruption of our leaders. Nigeria ought to have been given a front seat at the burial of Mandela by reason of the Nigerian contributions to the South African Liberation Movement under Murtala Mohammed in particular. Nigeria forfeited that right and recognition because of the caliber of the Nigerian leadership at this time and their notoriety for corruption and kleptomania of the worst order.
The Mandela advice to Nigeria which was well publicized at his burial would appear to have been validated by the 18 page letter recently addressed to the current Nigerian President by our longest-serving Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo. Just when we are still digesting the full import and implications of that letter, another 11 page letter from the eldest daughter of the same Obasanjo who became a Senator by riding on the coattails of her famous father, is right now circulating on the Internet. I have just finished reading a copy of the letter and I am baffled as I linked that letter in my mind with an earlier indictment of the same Obasanjo by his first son not too long ago. The general impressions of the enigma named Obasanjo by other Nigerians who have been very close to him reveal the same scandal. It occurred to me to delay writing this article until I am able to see more reactions of Nigerians to the latest indictment of Obasanjo by one of his own blood and flesh again. I wanted to do that before going ahead to comment on Obasanjo’s letter to Goodluck Jonathan and his “impersonated” response to that letter by a top notch journalist and brilliant mind, Sonala Olumhense, a man I so much admire as I gather up my thoughts to do this piece..
You can say all you want till you turn blue in the face about the motivation and the hypocrisy of Obasanjo in writing his 18 page letter to our current President, one thing you cannot deny or take away from Obasanjo is the fact that the man may be devilish but he sure knows his onions and he spoke the truth about President Jonathan and the current state of affairs in Nigeria.
In writing this piece I draw a lot of strength from my experience as a one-time speech writer in my career in the Federal Public Service of Nigeria for 25 years. What a good speech writer does is put himself in the position and mindset of the person for whom he is writing. The speech writer imagines what the person going to deliver the speech would have wanted to say to his audience and he reflects such opinions and sentiments in his draft in the hope and expectation the person delivering the speech would reserve the right to add or take out anything from the draft that is not true. Given that presumption, I just cannot see any one statement Mr. Olumhense has made in that satire that President Jonathan can deny. It was a brilliant and truthful write-up from the beginning to the end.
I honestly believe that Mr. Olumhense has done a marvelous job in putting himself in the shoes of President Jonathan and giving such a wonderful response that places Obasanjo and Jonathan in the same bracket of culpability for the shortcomings of Nigeria. Who would have thought the same man who gave Jonathan his chance to be President of Nigeria to begin with, could be so frustrated with him to a point that he could now write him such a letter and make it public without expressing any sense of guilt. For those who may not know, Goodluck Jonathan was the brain child of Obasanjo. There was no way in the world, Jonathan would have emerged the President of Nigeria had he not been picked to be the running mate to a terminally-ill Umaru Yar Adua who Obasanjo knew could hardly live long enough to finish his first term as President based on his medical record as Governor in Katsina which ought to have been scrutinized or properly vetted if Nigeria was not a banana Republic.
Obasanjo had to know that Jonathan was only a heartbeat from the Presidency in the event of Yar Adua dying in office, which was exactly what happened. That Nigeria would allow that scenario to play out like that without lifting a finger says a lot more about Nigerians than it said about Obasanjo. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. A country which would reject candidates like Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo to go settle for a Tafawa Balewa or a Shehu Shagari had to be sick in the head. Shagari or Tafawa Balewa were no where near Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo by their readiness to be President or Prime Minister of Nigeria. Nigeria always settles for a compromise choice rather than looking for a candidate best equipped and qualified to lead the country. Little wonder the country has always been poorly-led and served by Lilliputians whose only claim to office is their place of origin..
Before I comment any further, I urge any of you who have not read Olumhense’s satire to go to Sahara reporters.com to get a copy of Olumhense’s rendition of the kind of response President Jonathan, the Obateru of Owu in Egba land might have given to the 18 page letter from his political god father, the controversial Balogun of Owu. You could call the 2 letters an exchange of correspondence between two high chiefs of Owu in Abeokuta. The wizardry displayed in that letter by Olumhense is what has captured my fancy in writing this piece.
As a speech writer in my days in the Federal Civil Service, I used to put myself in the mind set of the big boss be it a Permanent Secretary or a Federal Commissioner or a Head of State of Governor for whom I was preparing a speech. I used to incorporate in my drafts the kind of information or advice I thought the big boss was most likely to want to put in their speech. In other words I had to know the boss very well and be a good mind reader just like Mr. Olumhense has shown in his very entertaining response supposedly written by a President whose eloquence in the English Language is so profoundly mediocre that he always ends up saying the opposite of what he has been coached to say by his speech writers. He embarrassed Nigeria in making his own comments at the world-celebrated funeral of Nelson Mandela.
President Jonathan has become a loose canon who has to be carefully watched because his own verbiage as President is only one or two notches better than that of his egomaniac first lady with a Ph.D from some back wood university in South Korea. The President has earned his own Ph.D in Zoology from Port Harcourt. He would have been better off serving as a leader in an animal farm kind of setting than a big country like Nigeria.
I remember once drafting a speech like the one Mr. Olumhense has brilliantly crafted for our clown President. I was writing the speech for the first lady Permanent Secretary in the Federal Public Service of Nigeria. I am talking about Mrs. Francesca Yetunde Emanuel aka (Franco) who recently turned 80 and was a guest of honor at the Sahara TV studio on October 5 on the occasion of the 53rd celebration of Nigeria‘s independence in the big apple. The woman is still alive and well, and can testify to what I am about to say in this write-up. I knew that my projecting her as the first lady Permanent Secretary in the Federation could be easily misconstrued by her audience. I let them know up front,that the late Mrs. Ighodalo and late Mrs. Alakija nee Adesoji Aderemi were Permanent Secretaries before her, but that the two of them were Permanent Secretaries in the old Western Region and not the Federal Service of Nigeria.
I knew it was important to let her audience hear that up front. I was very proud of what I wrote before I passed on the draft to Mrs Emanuel for her approval. I was apprehensive she might not like everything I have put in my draft, but I was confident from my knowing her very well that she was probably going to like my draft, and she sure did, praising the draft and thanking me for a job well done. She made me feel a few inches taller than I was because she was an extremely smart Permanent Secretary and arguably one of the best among her peers which included at the time, the four musketeers or super permanent secretaries comprising Allison Ayida, Philip Asiodu, Eme Ebong and Ahmed Joda.
That draft became the foundation pillar to my more than 40 years of close association with Mrs. Emanuel. She respected me and I adored her. She actually told me I surprised her with that speech because up to that point she used to think of me as “a dapper don womanizer and God’s gift to women” to use her exact word. I did not deny being a womanizer in my youth, but I was also an independent thinker and I take my job seriously. I do love women even now in my twilight years, but I try not to allow that weakness to get in the way of my objectivity and natural desire to excel. Mrs. Emanuel found out first hand I was not what a few of my colleagues in the Ministry had thought I was because I love to dress well and it still remains part of my DNA till tomorrow. I was an average student at school, but I recognize a good write-up when I see one. The Olumhense satire blew me away in the way it was put together. How I wish I could write like that..
I did pass the test as a speech writer for Mrs. Emanuel but I failed woefully when I tried to repeat the same scenario with Chief Obafemi Awolowo. After my posting from the Federal Ministry of Establishment, I had the fortune or the misfortune of being posted at one point in my career to go serve as Secretary to the the Special Task Force on Student Financing set up by the Yakubu Gowon Regime with Awolowo as Chairman and the former President Shehu Shagari, Wenike Briggs and Shetima Ali Monguno as members. Also serving in the Task Force as adviser was late Abdul Azeez Attah, the first son of Ohinoyi, the Attah of Igbira land who was the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance at the time.
It was a high visibility Task Force in Nigeria and I was proud to serve as Secretary. The year was 1974. Awolowo was then Chancellor of the the University of Ife that was later named after him. Awo was to deliver a speech at the Convocation where the late President Leopold Senghor of Senegal and late Sir Eric Williams, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago were to be honored with honorary doctorate degrees.
I was asked by Abdul Azeez Attah to prepare the draft of the speech Awolowo was going to deliver at the Convocation. I was scared to death about the assignment because I only knew Awolowo by reputation and from what I read about him on the pages of newspapers as a former Premier of Western Nigeria. Putting myself in the mindset of the “Lion of Ikenne and one of the most articulate and brilliant minds Nigeria has produced was very intimidating for me. It was an assignment I could not dodge or refuse so I had to do the best I could to write a speech I knew was going to be cleared with Dodan Barracks since all Federal Commissioners or Ministers had to clear their speeches with the highest seat of Government.
I found myself between the Devil and the deep sea and there was no escape. So I ran around seeking advice from some of my trusted friends on what I could write to satisfy Awo. I traveled out of Lagos to Ibadan and Ile Ife to look for samples of convocation speeches I could find anywhere. I went back to the old West to look for copies of previous speeches Awolowo had delivered as Premier. I thought I had enough information to do a draft I could be proud of. I wrote the draft after 2 weeks and I passed it on to the then Deputy Permanent Secretary, Aminu Saleh who read the draft, approved it without changing a single word word in the draft. He too passed it on to the Oxford-trained Abdul Azeez Attah. He too read the draft, made one or two corrections before passing it on to Chief Obafemi Awolowo. I was monitoring the movement of the file from one desk to another till it landed on Awo’s desk. The Lion of Ikenne read the draft, thanked Abdul Azeez for a good draft and the file came back to me passing thru the chain of command. I received a pat in the back for doing a good job and I was very proud of myself.
I confided in a few of my friends that Awolowo was going to read my draft at a convocation at Ife. Unknown to me and the chain of command in the Ministry, Awolowo had written his own speech without taking a word from our draft. How did I know that? I knew it because I had accompanied Awolowo to the Convocation. The title of Awolowo’s speech for the occasion was “the 1974 Nigerian Census” and why it must be annulled with immediate effect. As it turned out Awolowo had prepared that speech without clearing it with anybody including his boss , General Yakubu Gowon who was among the guests at the Convocation.
The Awolowo speech was the last straw that broke the 1974 Census back. When Murtala and Obasanjo sent Yakubu Gowon to the turkey farm in 1975 in a bloodless coup, one of the first acts of Murtala Mohammed as Head of State was to do what Awolowo had canvassed in his once-in-a-life-time speech. Murtala Mohammed annulled the Census by decree quoting verbatim some of the exact words Awolowo had deployed in his Convocation address. I would never forget that speech till I die.
Why am I bringing this up in assessing the efficacy of the beautiful satire Mr. Olumhense had put out as the kind of response President Jonathan should have given to Obasanjo’s 18 page indictment or condemnation of Jonathan’s Administration. I am doing it to show my appreciation for the genius of Mr. Olumhense in writing that satire. I think the man really knew President Jonathan and the way the man thinks. He did it in a way to bring laughter to the mouth of anyone reading it including Jonathan’s aides like Reuben Abati and Dr. Okupe who have become the President’s mouth organs, who are only interested in telling the President what he wants to hear and not what he needs to hear loud and clear. They are probably not aware as pointed out by Obasanjo that they have become the worst enemies of the President.
Once upon a time, I used to think a whole world of Reuben Abati who has now become one of the greatest turn-coats in Nigeria. I used to consider him a fire eater before his appointment to the kitchen cabinet of President Jonathan. I was hopeful that President Jonathan was going to succeed by having the courage of his conviction to let a fearless journalist like Reuben Abati serve in his Government. I never knew, for the life of me, that Mr. Abati was only positioning himself for power and drawing attention to himself by writing all those powerful editorials in the Nigerian Concord that make him the darling of many of us at home and abroad..
Once Abati has eaten out of the forbidden fruit of Power and Influence in Abuja, he has forgotten what he used to be. He has himself become one of the oppressors in Nigeria. If the President wanted somebody killed what Reuben Abati would be asking is what method he wanted them to use to carry out his order and not why the person deserves to die. When a President is served by useless aides like that, he should begin to sing his “Nunc Dimitis” because his downfall is around the corner as correctly predicted by Obasanjo.
I never thought Dr. Abati was a card carrying member of the P.D.P before he joined Jonathan’s Government. I thought he was the kind of man who was going to resign from the Government if he found he was losing his soul by working for a President who is acting and behaving as if his entire life depends on clinging to that office like some of the African dictators before him like Mobutu Sese seko Kuku Ngbendu Waza Banga, Robert Mugabe or Idi Amin Dada of Uganda.
I read in total amazement the information Obasanjo had to know that the President was sponsoring and paying hired killers to go after individuals he did not like like the current Governor of Rivers State and so many others who did not see eye to eye with him and his first lady. I could care less about the terrible letter Iyabo Obasanjo has just put out to irredeemably and forever damage the credibility of her father as a public figure and elder statesman in Nigeria. Olusegun Obasanjo, for all his conflict of interest, indiscretion and double jeopardy as a leader actually did Nigeria a favor by indirectly admitting or regretting he totally misled the country by picking Jonathan as the running mate to Yar Adua and by tolerating him for close to 6 years before parting ways with him as revealed in that letter.
The satire by Mr. Olumhense is a masterpiece that gave out so much information on why President Jonathan has been an unmitigated disaster for Nigeria. Mr. Olumhense has done it in a way that is most entertaining and friendly. He has used one satire stone to kill so many birds in one shot. That satire has done as much damage to Obasanjo himself like it did to President Jonathan and all the current power brokers in the ruling P.D.P who deserve to be given the boot in 2015 if the country does not implode before then.
The opposition mega party in Nigeria may have its own problems it needs to work on, but I still think Nigeria would be better off with the opposition than keeping the P.D.P in power beyond 2015. Nigerian voters must appreciate there is some merit in giving the opposition a chance to prove their own mettle. If the opposition fumbles like the P.D.P, it should take only 4 years to get rid of them like is done in the ideal democratic countries of the world. The Obasanjo hypothesis to keep the P.D.P in power for 100 years has been deflated as the hallucinations of a mad man. A one party dictatorship is as offensive and destructive in a Democracy. The parties should rotate power based on performance. Keeping just one party in power forever is a recipe for retrogression. If President Jonathan,, the P.D.P and Professor Jega and his I.N.E.C would allow a free and fair election in 2015. there is no way in the world the President and the P.D.P would be returned to power with all the revelations in the Obasanjo’s letter and the latest from Obasanjo’s first daughter and former Senator of Nigeria. What goes around comes around. The P.D.P has outlived its usefulness. Unto your tent O Israel. Merry Xmas to all of you.
I rest my case.