Oyenusi, Anini and Obasanjo: What’s the Difference?

The news coming out of Nigeria points to one thing and one thing only: President Obasanjo has lost all moral and legal rights to incorruptibility, transparency, and truth. He is not different from any and all white-collar criminals who engaged in or encouraged their proxies and lieutenants to engage in money laundering and other money schemes used to defraud the nation. As things stand today, there is not much difference between the dealings of Aso Rock and the dealings of street urchins who use force or the threat of force to get things done. What difference is there between what Oyenusi and Anini did and what the presidency has been doing the last couple years vis-à-vis the public coffers?

Obasanjo’s fingers are everywhere just as much as those of his subordinates. They are involved in all sorts of deals, from Canada to South Africa and from China to South America and the United States and all stops in between. Money laundering, midnight oil deals, shady quid pro quos, and endless nefarious exchanges have become the hallmark of the Obasanjo administration. He and his gang are bold and brazen and insatiable in their dealings. They use all available instrument of government to misappropriate public funds. I won’t be surprised if it came to light that the presidential fleet is sometimes used for high class prostitution, drug peddling and other reprehensible activities.

Again and again and again this president has proven he has no scruples. He has no shame. Here was a man who, long before his second coming as the president, went round the world campaigning against corruption and institutional decay. As a member of home and overseas-based think tanks, he spoke against theft, poor governance and other societal ills. But today, he is master of the game; master of trickery; master of everything that is bad and reprehensible about governance and the African society. Nothing is beneath him.

Accused by his own vice-president of theft and maladministration, he still has the nerves to be claiming to be fighting corruption and corrupt practices. In any decent society a man like Obasanjo would have be impeached, arrested, prosecuted and jailed. The Nigerian Congress that should have seen to this is also engaged in and embroiled in corruption and corrupt practices. Anywhere else, Andy Uba and his accomplices would have been arrested and prosecuted; but the Attorney General that should have seen to it is himself flouting and thumbing his nose at the law. And may be enriching him self, too.

I doubt if anyone would be surprised if it is ever revealed that the Obasanjo gang stole more money than the Babangida and Abacha gangs combined. How unfortunate that Babangida was never arrested and tried for his crimes. How unfortunately too that Abacha, by way of death, also escaped punishment. And to think Obasanjo and his posse may also elude the law in spite of their criminal and punishable acts? My goodness!

If President Obasanjo and his deputy and several other high ranking officials are not arrested and prosecuted for their crimes, then it is unjust to prosecute armed robbers and other petty thieves. The presidency is today more dangerous and inimical to the wellbeing of Nigerians that those two-kobo robbers. Why prosecute drug dealers and prostitutes and money launderers when the Ubas, the Obasanjos, the Odilis, the Atikus and scores of others are allowed to roam free and free from arrest and prosecution.

The law caught up with Oyenusi and Anini and their likes; it is hoped that the law will someday catch up with Obasanjo — not only for being an active participant in high and prosecutable offense, but also for encouraging others to dream up and execute dastardly schemes against Nigeria’s national interest.

History will not be kind to Obasanjo and his collaborators. Not at all! Dead or alive, history and posterity will remind him (and his offspring) that, in spite of the opportunity he had to transform the country for good, he deliberately took the wrong turn deciding to bastardize the country. Something drastic needs to be done to deter men like Obasanjo from future criminalities. For the sake of our country, something legal needs to be done to discourage this and future groups from abusing power and abusing the public’s trust.