It was a friend of mine who characterized former president Olusegun Obasanjo as a comedian and all his features to be theatric. He analyzed the eight-year rule of Obasanjo as a magnanimous charade, si don dey loot.
According to media accounts, Obasanjo burst into weeping that lasted for over fifteen minutes last week while bequeathing the Chapel at Aso Rock to the Vice President “elect”, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.
Obasanjo did not weep for Nigerians he impoverished, debased to a mere walking c
orpse, turned to street urchins, miscreants, fearful people et al but to his late Stella Obasanjo – a woman who took million of our naira to conduct abdomenoplastic that engulfed her life in Spain 2005. Didn’t Christians in the Chapel that day he wept not say, may her soul rest in peace? It is disheartening to note that anybody across the Niger is called a Christian!
While the lives of Nigerians rested in pieces in the eight years Obasanjo worsened the country the military left in shreds, he shamefacedly metamorphosed to a god. He had unforgiving spirit and was ever at alert to strike on any contradictor of his selfish policies. He turned a demigod of a sort that many believed in him and worshipped him. Dr. Peter Odili, the former governor of Rivers State, was an adherent of the Obasanjo sermon. Or do we say a faithful?
That was not enough for Obasanjo; he turned a Supreme God that no Nigerian got anything from his government without fasting and praying assiduously.
It’s disheartening in a way and heartening in the other that Obasanjo who turned these gods could condescend to a level as low as a vapour and pleaded to Nigerians to forgive him in Abuja during a thanksgiving service at the National Christian Centre to commemorate the expiration of his tenure in office and the inauguration of a new administration.
Imagine “Almighty” Obasanjo in his words: “I want to say that from my own experience in life and from my own upbringing, no human being should claim perfection and those who have identified any of my imperfections should forgive and continue to pray that whatever is imperfect normalize and God will perfect it”.
That being from a Christian wing, I am yet to agree or believe that Nigerians will forgive Obasanjo. Even though Christians might do, what of other Nigerians who are not Christians? Would the spirits of the entire mammoth assassinated under his government he was unproductive to bring their killers to book forgive him and stop to hound him?
An ingrate Obasanjo may be, if he is now asking for forgiveness of Nigerians for dragging them into the odious gutter, why did he not show forgiveness first to his vice, Atiku? Why did he not release Alams, knowing that, according to him, we are imperfect? Did he forgive Uwazuruike and give him the Republic of Biafra Uwazuruike is fighting for? What of Asari, who pleaded him to allow him go for a medical checkup and give him the resource control he is fighting for? Obasanjo punished Nigeria and enslaved Nigerians because of their refusal to endorse his egocentric Third Term Agenda.
Writing more in this article will amount to popularizing Obasanjo whereas he deserves to be reserved in the trash-bin of history. Though, that Nigerians forget things in a hurry, but they were not fools especially when Obasanjo deregulated the downstream oil sector of the economy for his gluttonous aggrandizement that inflated all the prices of goods and living in the country. Must we forget his in-humanistic act in Odi, Bayelsa State?
Obasanjo ruled Nigeria and Nigerians lost Nigeria to the hand of few oligarchs. Just like Charles Tailor is now facing charges he perpetrated against humanity while in office as Liberia’s president, Obasanjo should be called up by security agents to give account of the Nigeria, which was commended to his custody he messed up. What is he weeping and pleading for!
