It’s Time For Obasanjo To Retire From Politics By Larry Peters

Olusegun Obasanjo has probably lost all common sense or is probably so mentally twisted  by delusions of false grandeur that he imagines himself  the ultimate godfather and hypocrite who must continuously lie through his teeth and at the same time dictate what should happen in the nation to the new misrulers whom he so callously imposed on the nation  knowing that  nothing other than failure would be the consequence. If his mental faculties were still functional, he would have the wisdom to realise that he needs nothing other than to retire quietly, cease every political activity and go into charity to raise money for orphans, for the sick, disabled, poor and deprived as most leaders in saner climes do. That would at least have removed much of the undue attention accruing to him and dimmed the gravity of his destruction of the 4^th republic and failure as president.
Obasanjo has been so much of a disappointment that he needs to respect the citizens he has condemned to misrule and quietly retire. For starters, his second coming in the aftermath of the retreat of the military carried much hope. There is every reason to have imagined or expected Obasanjo to be a transformational leader particularly in his 2^nd coming. He is after all, a man who lived through the election rigging saga, the violence and other tragedies that truncated the 1st republic and engendered a civil war. He handed over to the fledgling democrats of the 2^nd republic and lived through the tragedies that buried the 2^nd republic. He is also a man who has been a victim of government persecution, spending many years  on death row in Gen. Sanni Abacha’s gulag until  Abacha  expired  and the new  regime set him free.
Such a man with a wealth of experience would in the least be expected  to  avoid the mistakes of the past and to provide focused and dedicated  leadership.  But  for Obasanjo there was no learning from  the  past . He was  practically given the PDP on a platter of gold,  a political party that evolved from the G34  group of pro democracy activists headed by  the former vice president Dr Alex Ekwueme,  Solomon Lar and others who risked  their necks insisting that Gen. Sanni Abacha  must go at a time Abacha held the whole nation in a grip of  assassinations and terror.  Obasanjo  thus became the   beneficiary of a party he had no hand in creating by virtue of the Northern cabal  who rather than allow the normal evolution and transition of the democratic process choose the injustice of imposing  a robot that they calculated  would  protect their vested  interests.
After a long, arduous and bloody struggle to get the military out of power, many heaved a sigh of relief in spite of the irregularities of Obasanjo’s emergence in the hope that his experience would guide the new order and nurture a truly democratic,   just and prosperous nation.  That expectation proved to be a fluke as Obasanjo quickly began unleashing all the same demons that truncated earlier republics and experiments in democracy. From election rigging, thuggery, godfatherism, assassinations, political violence  and general lawlessness, Obasanjo  broke new records in organized  violence and lawlessness to the extent of orchestrating the kipnap of governor Chris Ngige and of using thugs to chase governor Rashid Ladoja of Oyo state from office at the  behest of the notorious godfather Lamidi  Adedibu,  Ladoja  consequently  became the first governor in the nation’s history to be kicked out of office by thugs at the behest of a godfather aided and abetted  in such illegality by  no other than the president in the person of Olusegun  Obasanjo who is supposed to maintain law and order.
Obasanjo’s  8 year tenure was a practical exercise in madness as he waged proxy wars with almost all the principal officers of his regime including the vice president.  In spite of abundant resources accruing from an unprecedented oil boom, not a single infrastructure was built. The roads remained death traps; electricity remained epileptic and subject of a $16 billion scam. Pipe borne water remained a pipe dream, hospitals, schools and other public institutions continued their collapse, while unemployment, poverty and insecurity reached apocalyptic levels. He committed serial acts of mass  murder and  crimes against humanity  by wiping out whole communities in Odi and Zaki Biam. At the end of his tenure after a failed third term bid,  he consolidated  his agenda of nation wrecking  by  orchestrating a   record breaking  fiesta  of election rigging  which ushered in a terminally ill, incompetent  and clueless   Yar Adua  who was not fit to herd a colony of goats  together with a confused and bewildered vice president;  both  brazenly handpicked.  The consequence of  that conspiracy haunts the nation to date.
After a  shameful  outing,  marked most  significantly  by  misrule, lawlessness and corruption which is fast burying the 4^th republic,  Obasanjo wants to have no break from his evil plots and designs for the nation.  He continues to plot intrigues that will lock the nation in a perpetual circle of misrule and self immolation. It is obvious  that  the Obasanjo’s of this world, while pretending to be patriots   are actually  the greatest  enemies  of the nation. Obasanjo cannot claim to be ignorant of the fact that great nations cannot be built through injustice, hand picking of  incompetent  candidates, lawlessness,   godfatherism, election rigging,  thuggery and corruption.  America became the greatest nation on  earth  through  the rule of law and sustained  democracy devoid of election rigging, hand picking of candidates, thuggery and other such vices, so also did the United Kingdom, France, Germany and other successful  nations. By setting up the democratic experiment of the 4^th republic  with such vices, Obasanjo deliberately   plotted the ruin and ultimate collapse of the 4^th republic.
Nations such as Indonesia, South Africa, Chile,  Ghana and others  that became freed from military rule and Apartheid, some of them at about the same time as Nigeria have remained successful democracies devoid of election rigging, thuggery, godfatherism and other such corrupt acts that Obasanjo  wilfully sponsored in Nigeria. While those nations as a consequence have become better for it with social stability and prosperity, Nigeria  is sinking  further  into instability and social chaos  which might in the end prove fatal  for the nation.
It’s time for Obasanjo to retire from politics and cease  his assault on the sensibilities of  the long suffering  masses. Hosni Mubarak is serving life in jail just for alleged complicity in the police killing of three rioters during the Egyptian mass revolt. In saner climes around the world, many in the mould of Obasanjo are in jail  for  lesser  crimes. He should consider himself lucky that Nigeria’s contradictions and national insanity have  kept him free thus far.  But since there is nothing written in stone, being free today does not guarantee his being  free in the future.  Wisely retiring into charity and solitude are the only things that might mitigate his crimes  when eventually the sword of Damocles falls.