Erudite public affairs commentator and a senior aide in the Olusegun Obasanjo administration serving variously as a campaign adviser, presidential adviser and as Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, Chief Akin Osuntokun has revealed that the country would have been better for it if former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s third term had been successful, Vanguard reports.
What is your take on the state of affairs in the country?
We are in a situation called ‘flux’ and it is very difficult to make any sense of what is going on in Nigeria presently. Also, we are just coming out of a mini-political crisis and that is the crisis of the president’s health. That the President, a 74- year old man, who has led a very productive and busy life, gets sick is no news.
It is just a fact of life but what makes it problematic is that the position he occupies requires the full attention and ministration of body, soul and spirit, and if ill-health will deprive him of doing that, then governance will suffer. He told us he is scheduled to return to his doctors in London repeatedly. He came back about three weeks ago and confessed that he had never been this sick all his life. The management of the report of his absence was shoddy and a little bit of a disservice to Nigerians. They told us he was hale and hearty, only for the President to say he has never been this sick in his life. This is part of the problems the managers of public communication in Nigeria have. The media management was not done in a way one would have expected and it affected the credibility of the President.
Some have said that Obasanjo inflicted Nigeria with bad leaders because he was denied a third term?
I have heard it several times, people wondering out loud that would it not have been better if Obasanjo had remained or if third term had succeeded. Now, the status quo for me is a non-starter but if we are going to speculate on the prospects of that status quo, there aren’t many who would fit the role of leadership more than Obasanjo. I don’t know any other Nigerian leader who is as ideologically persuaded of Nigeria’s unity as Obasanjo.
Some people want Nigeria’s unity in order to lord it over others other but in terms of basic loyalty and allegiance, I don’t know of any Nigerian leader that has the kind of passion Obasanjo has. From 2007, look at the inadequacies of those who succeeded him. I don’t know of any Nigerian leader who is as energetic as Obasanjo. He has capacity. He is a very productive person, he is highly intelligent and he is an egoistic person who wants to be seen as the best President.
He wants to be ranked the best. He has the experience, the pedigree and exposure. Obasanjo started seeing, behaving objectively as an ideologue of Nigeria unity since his days in the military. In 1966, he was a rear commander in Ibadan when the civil war broke out. Professor Wole Soyinka, Victor Banjo and some other people; they had a group called the Third Force. They were opposed to the civil war; they wanted a progressive resolution of the crisis. They were not in support of Ojukwu or Gowon, so Banjo was commander of the Biafran Armed Forces and he was charged by Ojukwu to lead the Biafran liberation forces from Enugu through the Mid-West and South-West to Lagos to capture Gowon and Lagos. Now Banjo working with Soyinka, said ‘let us not fight through the West, let us talk to the rear commander of the Nigerian army in Ibadan (Obasanjo) and persuade him to look the other way while they march on Lagos. So they approached Obasanjo and he turned them-swearing his allegiance to the Nigerian army-So that is a practical demonstration of a person who is innately committed to Nigeria; whether Nigeria was good or bad, he defended the unity. During his tenure as civilian President, he got Nigeria going and he has a grand vision of the country. If you want to have a bit of objectivity about Obasanjo, talk to foreigners. Why will intelligent foreigners think so highly of him contrary to the perception a lot of Nigerians have about him? These people are not dunces and they know what is going on in Nigeria.
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