2015: Obasanjo ha, Jonathan ho!

Governance by imposition (GBI), that was what brought Yar’Adua to power. Yar’Adua wanted to return to the classroom, but former President Obasanjo urged him on to the presidency and seconded him with Jonathan. Jonathan himself was salivating for Bayelsa governorship but saw himself as the vice president. Shocked but pleased, he trudged on.
After Yar’Adua’s exit, Obasanjo as PDP BOT chairman rallied from behind to see Jonathan become acting president, then president in 2011, with the North watching from the lines dumbfounded. Not everyone has such guts, so no matter how one sees it, Obasanjo is one man who can bulldoze his way. If only such attributes were positively deployed, its harvest could drive this country generations on.
In the end, however, it’s mainly about him cloaked in national interest. Jonathan played the ‘I’m loyal’ card at the cost of his image as the ‘yes sir’ president. All that is changing. Maybe such image is hurting and he decided to grow and take charge. That too is not without cost – the cost of threat to the mentor and his possible reaction. That’s where we are now.
It took a celebration in honour of Ayo Oritsejafor on the 40th anniversary of his Christian ministry to score Jonathan low in the fight against corruption and onslaught against Boko Haram. To Obasanjo, Jonathan’s failure to hammer Boko at the beginning made the sore fester to threaten national security. Implication: Jonathan is weak. Ha! Jonathan explained that the Odi approach to terror is nothing but a disaster. It killed women, old people, children, but spared the target: militants. Ho! News has it too that Sule Lamido, the Jigawa State governor, has been approached by OBJ to get ready as Jonathan’s successor in 2015.
Ha! All of a sudden, some of OBJ’s interest areas have come under threat: The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway awarded to Bi-Courtney under Obasanjo’s administration became revoked for endlessly lingering on and its helmsman, Babalakin, arraigned for laundering $4.3 billion for James Ibori. Not done, the presidency fired the former boss of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Bolanle Onagoruwa – another Obasanjo person in the close quarters of power. The reason for the sack is said to be the handling of the $23.6m Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) contract awarded to a Canadian firm, Manitoba Hydro International. Ho! Obasanjo in return has begun reaching out to the Southeast through Iwuanyanwu.
Whatever his intention, contracting Iwuanyanwu puts OBJ on the wrong track.  Sule Lamido must have sensed that a knife is coming; he stayed off Obasanjo’s Mosque-launch in Abeokuta recently. Why shouldn’t he? Obasanjo brought Yar’Adua up and watched his passing-on. And now, Sule Lamido, what chance? So better answer ‘sir’ and flee. That’s wisdom. By the way, is it the North that’s throwing up Sule or OBJ? In the North’s silent mind, it would be, ‘he has come again’.
I keep thinking, why does OBJ think he must drive the choice of Nigeria’s president, and that overtly in the face of a sitting president? Maybe it’s this sense of ‘I am the wisdom of Nigeria’ or ‘my power or its aura counts more than that of a sitting president’, or maybe, too, ‘destiny has made me the installer-in-chief’. All these are misperceptions of self. Realism shows that the breath of a weak but sitting Nigerian president can flush out ten roaring lions outside of power. OBJ knows that, he used it. Now the file of the Halliburton scandal is being reopened and, probably, there’s a question he must answer. Moves are on to bring the Odi massacre under OBJ to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as crime against humanity. Vendetta was one attribute of OBJ’s governance style, and now he’s being told: ‘receive it!’
But, question is, did government know all these and only now opening up on them? That means, evidence of corrupt practice is a trap waiting for use as instrument of coercion when interests clash. When government is threatened, files are dusted up and converted to attack-dogs. Then again, if OBJ knew all this, and he does know, why begin the fight first? Who is he trying to impress? If Jonathan decides to become just half as ruthless as he was – opening up files, chopping off his protégés, crippling his business interests – fleeing into exile might look just reasonable. Already, Jonathan is getting easier with contract awards to former heads-of-state, thus putting a knife between them and OBJ. The North tells him, ‘don’t choose for us’; the East placed him on permanent suspect list; even the West calls him a pain in the neck. Where’s the escape route? OBJ, not so. That apparently weak president might just be too strong. It’s ha! you do me, ho! I do you, the nation stagnates.