Obasanjo’s messianic interventions

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has been a recurring decimal in Nigeria’s political history propping up now and then as a morality monitor to those in power
It was at the peak of the struggle for the actualization of the June 12, 1993 elections that General Olusegun Obasanjo told the world that the acclaimed winner of that election, Chief Moshood Abiola was not the messiah that Nigeria needed.
Obasanjo was then a retired military head of state who gained international respectability with his decision to enthrone democracy through handing over to civilians in 1979.
The comment was in the perspective of some, a reflection of Obasanjo’s perception of himself as the country’s ultimate saviour.
That perception was a near fact about five years later in 1999 when Obasanjo was again heralded to national leadership almost as a messiah, no thanks to the precipitous adventures of the late General Sani Abacha dictatorship.
At the mid-point of his second term in office, President Obasanjo’s seemingly messiac tendencies were again brought to fore when associates of the president made desperate efforts to extend his tenure with a third term in office.
A major kernel of the argument of the third term proponents was that without Obasanjo Nigeria would retrogress and hence the desperate measures taken to amend the constitution.
However, Obasanjo’s nationalistic outlook and commitment to an indivisible nation have never been in doubt. No less a person as General Ibrahim Babangida, even in the midst of their mutual suspicions of each other, has publicly praised Obasanjo for his patriotic commitment to the indivisibility of Nigeria as a country.
Perhaps it is from that prism that Obasanjo has perpetually positioned himself as a monitor over all his successors in office. It is a duty he has almost religiously kept to and sometimes at great ridicule and consequences for his personal safety.

Category: