The unexpected spectacle which greeted the whole world last week in which the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo and the former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, now a putative president-to-be, were pictured in an open reconciliatory embrace, appropriately flanked by evidently suborned “peace-makers” comprising of an asymmetric mixture of “men of faith” and flirtatious “political solicitors”, is nothing but an evidential “Exhibit A” confirming a “Surrender Note” from Obasanjo to Atiku at the presumed end of his famously self-declared war against Atiku. Like in all wars, there is always a winner and also a loser and in the OBJ contrived conflict with Atiku, OBJ has now ended up as the miserable loser.
Since God is always on the side of the victorious army, it is now safe to conclude, with respect to that great duel, that Obasanjo is the adjudged aggressor who must now necessarily pay reparations and obeisance to the innocent victim who, in this case, is Atiku.
That has always been the reality of surrender rituals. Good enough Obasanjo, is not a stranger to both the legal and psychological consequences of such unpalatable post-war martial transactions in which one party is made to kowtow to another as the inevitable outcome of a lost duel because, in 1970, Col Obasanjo was the victorious recipient of an instrument of surrender from the rump of the Biafra army humbly marched in by Col Philip Effiong. Now, it his turn, to swallow his pride, and tender a similarly worded instrument of surrender to his eventual conquerors, his former deputy, Abubakar Atiku. Certainly, what goes around comes around!
It is now obvious that Obasanjo is just a bully, and like all bullies, he instinctively lies, brags, victimizes others, and above all, a big coward, an ineffectual Paper Tiger with little or no scruples when absolving himself from messes that he created. Bullies never voluntarily apologise until they are beaten. But for his overwhelming fear that Atiku, his eternal foe, may well be the president in a few months, he would still have been flexing his muscles in Atiku’s direction. Now, is his time to package a face-saving surrender deal.
Traits of his being an irascible bully are everywhere: he takes credit for the good but unfairly apportion blames to innocent others for the bad; unlike genuine statesmen, Obasabjo is never at fault. This his particular character flaw, a major personal foible, for example, is spread all across the pages of his book arrogantly entitled “My Command” in which he struggled so hard to steal credits from other truly gallant officers like Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle the “Black Scorpion”, of blessed memory. The overwhelming torrent of authoritative stringent and outright rebuttals and negative rejoinders by officers and men who knew the truth literarily blew the publication into shreds.
In the extant matter between Obasanjo and Atiku, the salient facts are that in 1999 Atiku became his Vice-President after the election held immediately after he was brought out of prison, an election in which he had no input whatsoever. Whereas Atiku and many other were firmly on ground, putting up the party structure, using the already existing machinery of the PDM, he was still languishing in prison. No sooner he settled into office than he started to have undemocratic delusion and nostalgia of a typical military dictator before whom any contrary view was treasonous.
And to his eternal annoyance, the operative Constitution provides for a general scheme of separation of powers and with particular reference to the Presidency, there has to be a vice-president who must share in the sovereign limelight with him even at a much-reduced level. That reality was a problem for him and he immediately proceeded to be vilifying his vice as being disloyal and unfit to serve alongside him in spite of the obvious reality that it was Atiku that was doing all the dirty government jobs while he gallivanted across the globe. Suddenly, Obasanjo became jealous and became scared of a possible Atiku takeover.
Every official weapon at his disposal was unabashedly directed at shooting down Atiku and when the 2003 second term election came and he noticed the huge public and institutional supports that Atiku was wielding, OBJ, like the proverbial Chameleon, speedily calmed down and feigned contrition, employed the good offices of people like Chief Tony Annenih, the undisputed “Mr. Fix It”, with the PDP then to beg Atiku to drop his suspected ambition.
As soon as he was returned to power the second time he again cranked up every presidential tool at his disposal to vilify and bring down Atiku, so that his political career would not be salvaged forever. Somehow, and probably because he was indeed innocent, the evidently endangered Atiku miraculously survived the mischievous OBJ blitzkrieg.
Today we are hearing of reconciliation and unilateral forgiveness. We must remember that it was from Obasanjo that Nigerians first heard that Atiku was treasonably disloyal; irredeemably corrupt; a perpetual cohort with marabouts; that Atiku was crooked and kleptocratic, who would steal anything steal-able as well as many other uncountable morally depraved activities which Atiku was allegedly addictively involved in. It was also from the same Obasanjo that we heard that Atiku was involved in very serious criminal acts in the US and that might never step his foot into that country again.
So bad Obasanjo said he felt about Atiku that he openly swore that God would not forgive him if he ever supports Atiku, the political Lucifer, to become president because he cannot be trusted as a leader. For Obasanjo, it was a done deal and God Almighty was his witness.
Now that it appears as if the table is turning in Atiku’s favour, he is suddenly singing a brand new tune and he still expects Nigerians to gullibly accept is hasty allocutus: Atiku is now the best man for the job because his self-made God who has neither principles nor divine memory has instructed him, in the name of reconciliation, to forgive and indeed endorse Atiku under the same party he once disrespectfully tore its membership card to shred on live TV alleging that the PDP has “failed Nigeria” badly through its unmitigated corruption-driven policies and phenomenal leadership failure.
OBJ must be made to realise that he alone does not have the prerogative to both approbate and reprobated. After all, it was he who fraudulently brought the nation into his contrived personal feud with Atiku, he cannot now make peace with him without also making peace with the larger Nigerian society. He must also go further to solemnly re-assure the nation that in the event that Atiku wins the presidency, he would finally hide his crooked pen and never again write those his peculiarly hypocritical letters constructed purely out of envy like he did to Yar’ Adua, to Jonathan and, lately, to Buhari.
That is the only way he can secure an acceptable closure to the many wrongs that he has done to the nation through false allegations. Yes, “blessed are the peacemakers” but it could equally become a damnable curse if the so-called “peace and reconciliation” were fabricated solely on mischief, falsehood and political exigencies.
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