By Mobolaji Sanusi
“A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.”
—Adlai Stevenson(1900-1965)
In this political season, unimaginable things are unfurling. Things considered to be politically impossible and unthinkable at this contemporary age are happening. One such thing was seeing former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a self-avowed critic of President Bola Tinubu, GCFR, publicly decked in a locally produced adire agbada outfit with Tinubu’s infinity insignia clearly inscribed on it.
This happened at the recent commissioning of Gateway International Airport, Iperu Remo, Ogun State. The agbada that Obasanjo wore was the day’s dignitaries’ ‘aso-ebi.’ And adorning this adire atire made Obasanjo the cynosure of all eyes despite being in the midst of his administration’s created trillionaire business moguls like Aliko Dangote, Femi Otedola, Abdul Samad Rabiu, and even leading current political figures in the country, including Senate President Godswill Akpabio, serving and former governors, top-class legislators, and an elder statesman, Akinrogun ‘Segun Osoba.
Obasanjo was seen exchanging greetings with the president who, despite his exalted position, bowed in deference to the Yoruba’s ‘omoluabi’ way of showing humility and respect to elders. Obasanjo, who has an antecedent of setting good examples only when he has an audience before him to impress, lived up to his deceitful expectations by making suspicious salutary remarks about Tinubu’s leadership at the occasion. That moment was a spectacle to behold. It was an hitherto antithetical Obasanjo’s disposition to Tinubu and this immediately conjured a rhetorical question of whether Obasanjo was exhibiting true statesmanship or merely showing his usual political deceit as he stood before dignitaries while being beamed to the entire world.
Obasanjo has never hidden his disdain for Tinubu since his days as governor of Lagos State. During Tinubu’s journey to winning the presidency, Obasanjo futilely plotted his fall with everything up his political sleeves. Since Tinubu also assumed office as president of Nigeria in May 2023, Obasanjo has painted him as someone with no preconceived effective policy or plans for the country. He never sees anything good in the current president’s administration and this he professed through words and deeds. One wonders what has changed to make him, in daytime, be found celebrating Tinubu when nocturnally, his assembled hypocritical opposition figures, spread across the country, are plotting with him on how to remove the president from power.
In retrospect, Obasanjo, in his characteristic hypocritical manner, never saw anything good in previous administrations, civilian or military, except in himself or the administrations he led as a soldier and as civilian president.
This writer has an antecedent of being allergic to bad leadership cum leadership hypocrisy because hypocrisy remains one of the most profound destabilizing weaknesses of sitting leaders across countries of the world. The Owu-Abeokuta-born former president understands the leadership hypocrisy game thoroughly. Thence, to Obasanjo’s beguiled hypocritical self, he’ll stop at nothing to exploit this fact even when he arrogantly believes that no other leader is better or possesses good ideas to lead our dear country except himself. Yet, he remains to date, the most ruthless democratic leader this country has ever produced. His pain-inflicting, kangaroo-style electoral credentials under his then appointed electoral body’s henchman, Professor Maurice Iwu, set the template for whatever electoral incongruities that the nation is witnessing on the political turfs today. Obasanjo through Iwu concocted election results in clear contempt, defiance and violation of voters’ choices to favour his anointed candidates. He conquered everywhere conquerable with his presidential might except Lagos under Tinubu. At the apogee of his power, he deliberately inflicted a medically indisposed president on the country as his successor in 2007. Now, he’s seen gallivanting around, portraying himself and other defenceless Nigerians as victims of a sordid but avoidable political situation that he selfishly invented. To date, the country is still struggling to meander its way out of the leadership quagmire that this avaricious despot in civilian costume inflicted on our collective souls.
Again, it is not that Obasanjo didn’t attempt to topple Tinubu while he served as president, and even now that he’s out of power. His main headache now, as always, is that Tinubu has proved to be politically far ahead of him in strategic thinking, in being large-hearted, and; in his deployment of clinical street wisdom including above all, his enjoyment of timely grace and the benevolence of providence. In contrast, Obasanjo is enviously avaricious, tightfisted, lacked and still lacks purposeful character. He’s in serious want of political credibility as a result of his soiled democratic integrity which largely is a consequence of his aborted Third Term inordinate ambition and, his despotic defiance and desecration of constitutional institutions.
Obasanjo, despite his renowned globetrotting hypocrisy can never be a credible or reliable mentor of power—whether in Nigeria or anywhere in the world. One day, conscientious students of history will do justice to this assertion when historical searchlight will be beamed on Obasanjo’s tyrannical rulership of this country. To cover his dirty political antecedents, he banned history while in power from being taught as a subject in schools across the country. That unpopular decision has recently been thrown into the waste bin.
As I admonished then Governor but now President Bola Tinubu in one of my Friday columns in Vanguard newspaper in Y2003, he must be extremely careful with Obasanjo’s recent pleasant public disposition towards him. The Balogun Owu-Abeokuta always had a deceitfully pleasant gait towards whoever he planned to destroy or needed something from. Again: What does Obasanjo want from Tinubu? Tickling time shall tell.
Time to reflectively refresh our memory: Obasanjo was in 2003 welcomingly patronizing to then Alliance For Democracy governors except Tinubu who never fell for his bait. And the end result was his masterminding the untimely exit from power of those unsuspecting AD governors in Ondo, Oyo, Ogun, Osun, and Ekiti states.
But for divine fate, Tinubu would have also been swept away from power since then, and probably he would not be the president of the country today. Obasanjo goaded Seye Ogunlewe as minister of works to go all out to destabilize Lagos and uproot Tinubu from the governorship seat. In 2007, Obasanjo did everything extralegal to ensure that Tinubu’s successor at the time did not win the then-governorship election. Today, the rest is history.
Again. What does Obasanjo this time around want from Tinubu that makes him to soften his hypocritical criticism of the president and his government? Wearing the Tinubu costume in public at this point when his propelled opposition figures against this administration are swelling, demands circumspection rather than dropping of guards. Obasanjo’s antecedents of betrayals do not project reliability, no matter how good one is to him. Examples abound in this regard. Despite Osoba’s handing over to him, upon his request, that expansive Presidential Library land in Abeokuta during his tenure as governor, Obasanjo ended up betraying Akinrogun. He was at his (Osoba’s) residential dining table on Election Day in 2003 while his assigned electoral agents were on the political turfs plotting the then Ogun helmsman’s exit from office as governor.
Also, while Obasanjo was surreptitiously plotting Chuba Okadigbo’s impeachment as Senate president in August of Y2000, he attended his birthday party and even danced with Okadigbo’s wife on the dance floor. He acted on that day as if he was at peace with Okadigbo, but days after, he goaded his legislative goons to effectuate Okadigbo’s impeachment. That is the true deceitful character of the man called Obasanjo who rocked the Tinubu costume last weekend. Equally coming to memory is how Obasanjo forced Audu Ogbe’s resignation as Peoples Democratic Party chairman after his unannounced visit to his Abuja residence in January 2005. With a sinister motive at heart, Obasanjo demanded for and was prepared a sumptuous pounded yam meal by the wife of the then chairman of the national ruling party during his presidency. After an enjoyable meal, he brought out of his pocket a typed resignation letter for Ogbe to read and sign in a fait accompli move before his entire family. That is Obasanjo for you—ruthlessly devoid of compassion. What could then be the motivating factor this time around that Obasanjo is fraternizing with Tinubu?
An Obasanjo who still believes, like he did during the 2023 general elections, that Peter Obi is the best candidate for the presidency should not be taken seriously when he prays for, describes, or applauds Tinubu in the superlatives. Anyone with a good sense of contemporary history should join hands in admonishing President Tinubu to beware of Obasanjo’s venomous familiarity with him and his family.
Obviously, the former president’s recent hobnobbing with the Aso-Rock Presidential Villa is borne out of nothing but ulterior rather than altruistic motives. President Tinubu, please note that Obasanjo has nothing to offer you. That you survived him in the past is not a basis for ignoring his ominous despotic antecedents and the current bait being dangled by him.
Obasanjo is someone who’ll “cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump to make a speech for conservation”—apologies to that United States’ renowned diplomat and politician, Adlai Stevenson. This is the double-edged reality Tinubu should be ready to deal with in his newfound love with the Obasanjos of this world. Once again: President Tinubu, beware of Obasanjo’s antics….!
•Sanusi, former MD/CEO of Lagos State Signage & Advertisement Agency, is currently managing partner at AMS RELIABLE SOLICITORS. (sms/whatsapp-07011117777).
