FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo has many things going for him. He is controversial, but has managed to make his controversiality productive and rewarding. He is not gifted in many things, but out of his little endowment, he has cleverly forged a reputation for huge accomplishments, becoming a cult political figure to be consulted, venerated and feared. He has little interest in telling the truth, but even the lies he told, often with irresistible panache, have come across as reassuringly cathartic for their capacity to wound our common enemies. He does not amount to much with us, at least not in our estimation, but his statements, vituperation, and sanctimoniousness, paradoxically carry weight. He exasperates us, but we endure him, and even find him amusing. No man has ever lived so fulsomely in the public glare preaching half-truths. It was, therefore, not surprising that on Tuesday, the insouciant former president indulged himself again to the maximum, barely a few weeks after thoroughly carpeting President Goodluck Jonathan for incompetence. This time it was at the public presentation of his book, My Watch, a narcissistic sequel to his many other books, chiefly My Command. A Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain in Ogun State, Buruji Kashamu, had two Fridays ago secured an ex parte injunction barring Chief Obasanjo from publishing his new book, saying it would permanently injure his reputation and pre-empt the outcome of a N20bn libel suit he had instituted against the former president. The case was to be heard again on Wednesday. But a day before the hearing, My Watch was presented. During the well-attended and well-publicised presentation, Chief Obasanjo imperiously engaged in theatrics. He could not be bound by Justice Valentine Ashi’s ex parte injunction because he had since finished the book Mr Buruji was complaining about, and his publishers had since published it. It was a legal fog the former president was happy to seize to deride everyone, starting from the bemused judge. If the Nigerian judiciary was normal, argued Chief Obasanjo sarcastically, the judge would be sanctioned. He was not struck by the irony of constituting himself into an appellate court in a case in which he is the defendant. Nor was he discomfited by the fact that as an ex-president, he had by his resort to self-help and unstatesmanlike utterances once again scorned and humiliated the judiciary of the country he recently presided over. The book itself, a trilogy on his life and public service, is according to him meant to settle many of the controversies that swaddled his time in office. He reiterated to his audience that he actually never courted third term, the infamous tenure extension he was accused of seeking, but that there was an attempt by some governors and politicians to foist it on him. He only knew about the conspiracy, he said tersely, but never actively promoted it. He could have fooled us. If he did not conceive the plot, what did he do to halt it? The worst speciousness he engaged in last Tuesday was his defence of his political meddlesomeness — the foisting of the Umaru Yar’Adua/Goodluck Jonathan presidency on Nigeria. “I don’t regret bringing in Yar’Adua and Jonathan,” he said defiantly. “If they don’t do well, those coming from behind (whatever that means) should learn from me and do better.” What insufferable arrogance. Sneak reviews indicate that My Watch is a compilation of expletives, vituperations and judgemental inanities. We wait patiently to read the multi-volume autobiography, even if it breaks our backs. For sure it will only reinforce our view of Chief Obasanjo. He is too old to change, follows no one, does not have a following, and is too preoccupied with himself and his own narrow interests to care what the country feels or needs.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 06:50:04 +0000