That OBJ endorsed Gregory Peter Obi and made noise about it by inviting some select journalists was in essence, a show of shame. Critically appraising his body language vis-a-vis his holy (or should I say unholy?) pilgrimages to IBB and Abdulsalami Abubakar in Minna and others behind the scene, one can conclude that, OBJ has been stripped naked again and he’s ready to dance to a macabre tune all alone. It is glaring that his subordinates in the Military, whose unalloyed support he courted by junketing from Lagos to Minna, to Kano and thence to Jalingo, did not support his ill-advised position on the choice of Obi as a fait accompli.
To those dignified elder statesmen, it is better to play an advisory role and be fathers to all while letting all Nigerians vote for whomever they feel deserves to administer the country aright. But Mr. know-it-all will rather shamelessly be an arrowhead of a candidate being bashed left, right and center and looks so unpresidential in all his dispositions.
Instead of the much-touted conclave of the self-appointed wisemen he had pencilled down to dictate where the pendulum of power would swing, he took it upon himself to go it all alone when those heads backed out. That in itself is an epicaricacy for democracy which allows pluralism of its avid players to choose freely, without hind or let or coercion.
OBJ has been left alone to dance naked in the market square, where the gods are going to humiliate him once again.
His “chi” made him escape Abacha’s gallows by whiskers. He may not be twice lucky when the day of reckoning comes.
He has done enough damage to democracy since he luckily became President in a civilian garb and people cannot wait to see him kick the bucket since he has waited too long in the departure lounge with his boarding pass of death.
He harbours bile and vile of the worst quality and quantity in his pot-belly while he sardonically and pharisiacally calls himself a repentant democrat.
He ruled with fiat as if he was still in his Military khaki when mother luck smiled on him to preside over the country since the advent of this fledgling democracy. Working with nocturnal accomplices, he pulled the rug off the feet of any PDP Chairmen who refused to dance to his kind of deathful song. Audu Ogbe was made to learn in a hard way that dining and wining with an Obasanjo was like singing his nunc dimitis dirge.
He obstinately refused to obey the Court ruling mandating him to release the funds of Lagos State which he seized when a democratically elected Governor audaciously called his bluff off by creating additional LGAs.
That he hated Lagos is to say the obvious. One has not forgotten how he called Lagos a jungle city as if he was not part of the rot that we Nigerians had as ill-luck to preside over.
OBJ showed his sit-tight rulership instincts in his now infamous 3rd term gambit. Till tomorrow, the dangerous Mephistophele would still have us believe that he did not cavort the 3rd term mantra and that if he wanted it, he would have got it pronto. That showed how much disdain and contempt he has in his dangerous arsenal to release on innocent Nigerians at anytime he chooses.
Obasanjo it was who organised rag-tag crypto-militarists to harry that towering figure called Chuba Okadigbo to his premature death through teargassing of people holding a rally in Kano. Anything or anybody not on the same page with Obasanjo, is better to die for him to continue his self-conceited Messianism as the only omni-scient demi-god.
His infamous gibberish that Abiola was no Messiah went viral when people thought he could turn the tide to let democracy germinate through persistent nourishing of its soul, body and spirit. Unknown to the undiscerning lesser beings, OBJ was scheming a plot to take the shine off Abiola and come to our corridors of power through the backdoor. He actually got what he wanted when he escaped Abacha’s gulag and looked famished, gaunt and almost lifeless upon his release.
Despite being the luckiest human being to rule at all levels, he didn’t see the need to bring human milk honey to his country men. With gusto he amassed humongous amounts of our commonwealth to assuage his thirst and frail figure in 1998. Yet again, after leeching us dry, he became rotund and the valley that his stomach had become soon turned to pot- belly.
Those who the gods want to destroy, they will first make mad. In order to strip a king of his rulership power in Ashanti Ghana, his sandals would be put on his head and banished from the palace into the wild to cohabit with the hyenas, snakes and orangutans just like its precedent in the Bible about King Nebuchadnezzar. Such may soon be Obasanjo’s lots.
©Dr Dele Afelumo