Adamu Adamu
6 November 2009
opinion
Abuja — Education, according to Will Durant, is the progressive discovery of our ignorance. Which goes to prove that in Nigeria, we are still a very uneducated lot; because our ignorance is something we have never come close to discovering. Of course, there is a way of learning how to learn; but, for us, that is a road less travelled.
Chief Olabode George, erstwhile untouchable pal to the former president and South-West vice chairman of the ruling People's Democratic Party, PDP, has finally been convicted. And you were surprised that many people were surprised, some perhaps shocked; many others were delighted, several of them perhaps elated. And so, you may wonder, now, what is the news? Where there is crime, shouldn't there be punishment?
First, let's not forget that in our land of rule of law, the man is only convicted and not conclusively proved guilty. That will only come when he loses every appeal. If, at a later stage, they say that he hasn't done it, well, he hasn't done it, that is. But pray, tell me, why is there such universal disgust with his person and almost universal applause at his conviction? Is it with the criminal or is it with the crime? And who has ever applauded criminals?
And punishment is given to deter future criminal behaviour, or reform a criminal mindset or take it off the planet; and/or, in the process, extract retributive payback which, though anathema to some, is a fitting enough reward for impunity. But perhaps people's pleasure at Bode George's current fate may have nothing to do with the deterrence of crime or reformation of criminals or even with retributive justice.
And, moreover, it is not because he is a Big Man. Many were the big men before him whose fall did not elicit spontaneous celebration--at least not one newspaper page. And it is not because he is a chieftain of the ruling party; because, even if none of its members has recently been jailed, the nation knows hundreds who deserve to be. But even if the thought of retribution may have generated interest in the case, it is the pleasant shock and novelty of seeing corruption, yes domesticated, unadulterated corruption, finally and not selectively and even if only for once being truly fought by a judiciary that kissed electoral dust; and, also, the current affair involves that long-standing, seemingly discarded and hopefully forgotten small matter of an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, abandoned project. Dusting and unearthing that can be important because it may signal the beginning of the unravelling of the Obasanjo Curse on the nation.
When Chief Sunday Awoniyi declined to be Secretary to the Government of the Federation for Chief Olusegun Obasanjo's first term, he opted instead to take up the chairmanship of the People's Democratic Party, PDP, to build it into a true political party that could
keep all elected members in check and on their toes by enforcing discipline throughout the ranks. Obasanjo knew what he was doing when he did all he could to thwart that ambition. He didn't want to be surrounded by people like Awoniyi when there were others like retired Colonel Olabode George.
Obasanjo always did the opposite of what was expected of him. The nation expected statesmanship from him. Instead he perfected for it the art of streetwise politics--micromanagement, know-allism, thievery, corruption, vote buying, strong arm tactics and official violence. It gave him a clean slate--a political tabula rasa on which to write the new rules of the game, expecting him to lay down a firm foundation for good governance. Instead, he began writing the details of his dynasty; and, when finally forced, he unceremoniously handed over a corrupt slate to his successor muddling the present and besmirching the future of politics in Nigeria.
It expected unity from his stewardship--he, someone who, in his own words, had single-handedly fought the civil war, personally taken the surrender from the rebels, again, single-handedly; and, after the assassination of General Murtala Mohammed, he single-handedly united the country. Instead, he exploited all the existing differences, creating new ones in the process--ethnic, religious, political, communal, reformer-anti-reformist, core-North, Niger Delta, onshore-offshore, Faseun-Ganiyu and related misfortunes--and left the nation more divided than when he took it and more fractured than at any time in its then 47years of post-independence existence. He left nothing unsullied.
He created the concept of party leader over the head of the chairman in order to destroy party leadership. He clipped the wings of secret cults in his First Coming, but provided it with a jet propulsion engine on his Second Coming. He was not under the bidding of an ethnic association but he was always dancing to its tunes. Concerning corruption, he said he was going to wage an unrelenting war. He did--to make it much stronger.
Under normal circumstances, it is unlikely to wage war against corruption if the legislature is corrupt, and difficult to do so if the judiciary is corrupt and definitely impossible if it is the executive himself who is corrupt. In Nigeria, where all the three are corrupt and corrupted through and through, it is an improbable undertaking to begin. And that was the Obasanjo Curse.
But Bode George was not a metaphor for the Obasanjo Curse; he was merely its dangling modifier. But in this he was just being the prototypical Nigerian whose self-importance is determined by nothing more than his luck in having a corner of the nation to pluck. The typical Nigerian doesn't prove his importance by being a better Nigerian, or by being a role model for others, or by being a benefactor to society. Why should he be? He is not a lesser mortal; he proves his importance by breaking the law.
In this nation, the measure of self-worth for a person is always directly proportional to his chances for successfully pulling rank on everyone, and breaking every law in sight with impunity and with utter contempt; and then going scot-free thereafter--with the police at respectful attention and even with a dutiful salute. That was what they enjoyed while it lasted.
The Obasanjo Curse was not just a matter of providing a shield with which to protect his corrupt friends; the curse was in how he blew Nigeria's last chance, He was supposed to be the salve that would cure all the wounds--of annulment and religious crisis--but he proved the unkindest cut that made all the wounds deeper.
A president who was supposedly elected by the people but whose actions could not be checked by the legislature nor his behaviour and intentions be deterred by the judiciary nor yet his official conduct be guided by the ethos of public service is in reality an absolute president--a president only in name, an absolute, disdainful monarch in practice. Bode George and other cronies took after him.
And their collective ruined the polity. Today, if Obasanjo had any enduring legacy to his name, it was perhaps no more than his creation of a group of new good-for-nothing consultant-billionaire class in the South-West and a militia-sponsoring billionaire class in the Niger Delta. His was not just the reprehensible spoils system; it was a spoilt system at the head of which is a commander-in-thief assisted at various levels by cronies-in-power. Cronies in ministries and parastatals, representative of the new leadership class who are hungry for power, hungry for the spoils of office and not ready to be accountable to any higher power or to the people, who are held in contempt.
They thought they could always depend on the Golden Rule which said: those who had the gold, made the rules. And those who didn't have, obeyed. But a time comes when all the gold in the world proves of no avail. And so, ever so suddenly, the king is banished--along with courtiers. It is only time for banishment; the time for punishment is coming later, perhaps much later. But, sure as daylight, it will come; and, for Bode George, the present is no longer the past--it is the future, which, for him, starts today.
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