The Horse Riders and the Horse
There is a certain understanding among Nigeria’s military generals. That understanding is, more importantly, a misunderstanding of democratic values. And it is beginning to tell the extent ordinary Nigerians would want to tolerate the whims and caprices of their military brass in a democratic dispensation such as theirs. That ‘understanding’ among the country’s military generals is that they are the horse riders and the country and its people are the horse. The trophy to be won is to become the number one citizen of the country. And in all of that, chivalry, guts, wealth, fame and vendetta are at stake and they are clearly spelt out as the components of winning.
Nigeria’s military generals have never made a secret of this ‘understanding’ in references they make to their rather bizarre disposition. In his clarion call which was made partly to bring the attention of Nigerians to what he observed as the shoddy performance of President Buhari’s government, for example, former president Obasanjo openly confirmed this assertion when he said about the incumbent president: “Even the horse rider then, with whom I maintain very cordial, happy and social relationship today has come to realise his mistakes and regretted it publicly and I admire his courage and forthrightness in this regard. He has a role to play on the sideline for the good of Nigeria, Africa and humanity and I will see him as a partner in playing such a role nationally and internationally, but not as a horse rider in Nigeria again. President Buhari needs a dignified and honourable dismount from the horse. He needs to have time to reflect, refurbish physically and recoup and after appropriate rest, once again, join the stock of Nigerian leaders whose experience, influence, wisdom and outreach can be deployed on the sideline for the good of the country. His place in history is already assured.”
In a true democratic dispensation, the image or portrait would have been that of an elected public office holder as the servant of the people – “the horse” if you like – and the people who gave him the mandate to represent or rule them, the masters or the “horse riders.” But it is not so in the understanding of Nigeria’s military generals. In their understanding, they are the horse riders and the country and its people are the horse.
Perhaps we might need to remind ourselves about the uses of a horse here. A horse can be used in war as in cavalry, in games as in equestrianism, in agriculture as in ploughing or for transportation as in carrying things or pulling carts. But one thing is peculiar about the horse, especially when it is being used by the rider to exhibit his gallantry. If it is starved, or if for any reason it is angry, it could throw the rider off and the rider could break his neck or be seriously injured. Horse riders know this very well and they don’t ever take the risk. The irony in Nigeria’s case is that rather than the public office holder as the horse throwing off its master which is the country and its people because it is starving or angry, the country and its people now have a capacity to throw off the public office holders because the people are angry or hungry.
Given this mindset of Nigeria’s military generals which is not all inclusive of the usefulness and possible dangerous disposition of the horse, it becomes quite easy to see why the democratization process of Nigeria is taking so long as the road towards its attainment widens interminably. This is probably the reason many Nigerians greeted the statement with mixed feelings when former president Obasanjo (now Chief Obasanjo) recently told them the incumbent government of General Muhammadu Buhari was planning to frame him up in order to silence him. On Friday, 8 June precisely, Obasanjo accused the Buhari administration of plotting to indict him with false charges in order to indefinitely incarcerate him. In a statement made public by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi that Friday, Obasanjo said the Buhari government was planning to use fake documents and witnesses to achieve its nefarious purpose.
Chief Obasanjo’s claim came as the latest twist in several months of acrimonious exchanges between the former President and the incumbent President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigeria Armed Forces, General Muhammadu Buhari. The two gentlemen initially fell apart in January 2018, after Chief Obasanjo accused Mr Buhari of ineptitude and corruption, and advised him not to seek re-election in 2019. In that clarion call he made to the generality of Nigerians, Obasanjo severely criticised the performance of the Buhari administration.
In apparent reference to the administration, he quoted a Yoruba adage that a man whose clothes were infected by lice would always have his fingernails stained by blood. To make sure the lice were killed, one had to pluck them from the clothes, fix them between two fingernails and squeeze hard on them until they died, leaving their blood stains on the fingernails. For one’s fingernails not to be stained with the blood of lice, one had to ensure that lice were not harboured anywhere within one’s vicinity.
“The lice of poor performance in government – poverty, insecurity, poor economic management, nepotism, gross dereliction of duty, condoning of misdeed – if not outright encouragement of it – lack of progress and hope for the future, lack of national cohesion and poor management of internal political dynamics and widening inequality – are very much with us today. With such lice of general and specific poor performance and crying poverty with us, our fingers will not be dry of ‘blood’, Obasanjo said in that clarion call.
The former President said all these led him to take the unusual step of going against his own political party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), in the 2015 general elections to support the opposition. He saw that action as the best option for Nigeria at the time. As it had been revealed in the last three years or so, that decision and the subsequent collective decision of Nigerians to vote for change were the right decision for the nation, Obasanjo affirmed.
Unfortunately, he observed, the situation that made Nigerians vote massively to get rid of Jonathan was playing itself out again. He had written to Jonathan while Jonathan was President, urging him to act and put things right before it was too late – and characteristically that letter had been titled “Before it is too late”. Jonathan ignored it and it became too late for him and those who goaded him into ignoring the voice of caution.
Obasanjo said he thought he knew the point where President Buhari was weak and he had spoken and written about it even before Nigerians voted for him. Even he had voted for Buhari because at the time, it was “any option but Jonathan”.
“I know that praise-singers and hired attackers may be raised up against me for verbal or even physical attack but if I can withstand undeserved imprisonment and was ready to shed my blood by standing for Nigeria, I will consider no sacrifice too great to make for the good of Nigeria at any time. No human leader is expected to be personally strong or self-sufficient in all aspects of governance,” Obasanjo said.
He said he knew Buhari before Buhari became President. According to him, Buhari was weak in the knowledge and understanding of the economy. But he thought that he could make use of Nigerians who were good in that area. He also knew Buhari’s weakness in understanding and playing in the foreign affairs sector. Again, there were many Nigerians who could be used in that area, people who had knowledge and experience that could be deployed for the good of Nigeria.
Chief Obasanjo went on to catalogue what he said were the problems with the current administration. They included official corruption, the presidency turning its eyes the other way and the menace of herdsmen in some states of the north. Obasanjo observed that the herdsmen and crop farmers issue was being wittingly or unwittingly allowed to turn sour and messy. “It is a sad symptom of insensitivity and callousness that some governors, a day after 73 victims were being buried in a mass grave in Benue state without government condolence, were jubilantly endorsing President Buhari for a second term! The timing was most unfortunate,” Obasanjo lamented.
Other areas Obasanjo spoke about where he said President Buhari had come out more glaringly than most of his fellow generals thought they knew about him were his deployment of nepotism bordering on clannishness and inability to bring discipline to bear on errant members of “his nepotic court.” This, he said, has had grave consequences on the performance of the Buhari government to the detriment of the nation. “It would appear that national interest was being sacrificed on the altar of nepotic interest,” Obasanjo suggested pointing to the case of the former Chairman of the Presidential Pension Reforms Task Team (PRTT), Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina.
Also, Chief Obasanjo noted President Buhari’s poor understanding of the dynamics of internal politics. This, he said, had led to making the nation more divided. Inequality had widened and become more pronounced, which also had effect on the general security of the nation. And then, there was the idea of passing the buck. For instance, blaming the Governor of the Central Bank for the devaluation of the naira by 70% and blaming past governments for it which he regarded at the end of the day as not accepting one’s own responsibility. “Let nobody deceive us, economy feeds on politics and because our politics is depressing, our economy is even more depressing today. If things were good, President Buhari would not need to come in. He was voted to fix things that were bad and not engage in the blame game,” Obasanjo said.
Chief Obasanjo said he believed the situation Nigerians were in today was comparable to what and where the country was at the beginning of this democratic dispensation in 1999. The nation was tottering. People were hopeless and saw no bright future in the horizon. It was all a dark cloud politically, economically and socially. The price of oil at that time was nine dollars per barrel and the country had a debt overhang of about $35 billion. With the lack of direction in the country, most people were confused.
Wherever he went, he heard Nigerians complaining, murmuring in anguish and anger, Obasanjo said. “But our anger should not be like the anger of the cripple. We can collectively save ourselves from the position we find ourselves. It will not come through self-pity, fruitless complaint or protest but through constructive and positive engagement and collective action for the good of our nation and us and our children and their children,” he emphasised.
By April 29, Obasanjo was saying that nobody could intimidate him on the mission to set up a third force with the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM), the group he had been promoting across the country. Obasanjo said this when he addressed thousands of CNM members during a town hall meeting held at the Trans Amusement Park, Bodija in Ibadan. “For me, I don’t think anyone can intimidate me. Let me remind you, I have gone through many things. I have been jailed without committing any offence,” he said. “My struggle for the good, progress, unity and development of Nigeria will not diminish. I will continue to look for the good of Nigeria wherever I am. Men of valour don’t run away from challenges and it is the same thing with women of honour.”
Many observers considered Obasanjo’s criticism rather harsh, compared with what he achieved in all the years he was a two-time head of state of the country. Some said, on a lighter mood, that he was preying on Buhari as a military colleague because he acquired his doctorate degree at the Open University of Nigeria and it is believed by some Nigerians that Buhari did not read up to the School Certificate level. In other words Obasanjo’s vitriolic attack was a veiled bluff to Buhari for not having yet acquired a regular degree.
But some of the people also believed that the bluff, presented to the Nigerian public as a seeming quarrel within the military cabal was a make-belief and that characteristically, the generals would easily settle their seeming differences when they meet in their exclusive presidents’ club over drinks and fraternal arguments as to who was the greatest Nigerian among them, the military brass. For them, the country would always be the trophy and military honour, wealth, fame and gallantry would always be involved.
To cover up the seeming quarrel, on May 22, President Buhari came up with his own attack on his former ally when he accused Obasanjo of spending $16 billion on power projects with no results . ‘Where is the power?’ Buhari asked. Buhari accused all three presidents of the fourth republic of wasting those years of plenty. He told the country that no leader since Gen. Sani Abacha had paid attention to the country’s infrastructure needs. There was nothing to show for the proceeds from oil revenue between 1999 and 2014 when, according to him, oil prices soared to about $135. He said he had restrained himself and his aides several times in the past from responding to various accusations of non-performance and clannishness levelled against him by Obasanjo.
According to the President, the debt incurred from the $16 billion spent by Obasanjo on power without any output was now being paid by his administration. Buhari said that in Nigeria’s history, his government had made the highest capital allocations as reflected in the 2017 and 2018 budgets.
He described the current period in the nation’s history as terrible and canvassed for the need to revamp the country altogether, recalling how he was ruthless as a military head of state, arresting and throwing people into prison, a punishment he said was also meted out to him. President Buhari urged Nigerians to remain vigilant and ensure that only “people of conscience are in-charge of governance at all levels” as the nation prepared for the general elections in 2019.
The President’s comments about spending on power projects under the Obasanjo administration led to calls for a probe of the expenditure. Obasanjo instantly denied spending that huge amount on power as president and said the matter had already been investigated. Based on reports from his informants, the former President said he did not expect any fair or transparent investigation into his administration by the Buhari government.
The EFCC had conducted a clinical investigation on the activities of Obasanjo in and out of government. He queried why the government would now be made to stand down the existing report that gave him a clean bill of health on the probes. Obasanjo said he suspected that the government wanted to use the anti-graft agency to get him indicted, by fair or foul means, for possible prosecution and persecution like it was doing to its real or imagined opponents, enemies and critics.
Obasanjo said he expected that things would be handled differently in a democracy. “Dissent is a fundamental principle on which liberal democracy is predicated. A true democrat must be ready to live with and accommodate dissent and opposition,” he said. Despite his concerns, Obasanjo was optimistic that efforts to suppress opposing voices would fail and he was willing to face another probe. “While it is regrettable how the government has sunk in its shameless desperation to cow opposition, a resort to blackmail, despotism and Gestapo tactics being employed by the goons of this government would not hold water. And no government ever remains in power forever,” his statement noted.
Some observers disbelieved the allegation of hounding Obasanjo in its entirety, saying it was how Nigeria’s military generals enjoyed deceiving the ordinary citizens, making them believe they were at loggerheads with themselves but would later meet in their exclusive ex-presidents’ club over drinks and chat about who was the greatest Nigerian among them.
Others said they wouldn’t be surprised. Anyone who knew the unbridled ambitions of Nigeria’s military generals which had motivated their series of coups and countercoups in the past, which forestalled the country’s democratic evolution for 33 years – between 1966 and 1999 – would readily testify that their struggles against each other predicated on their vainglorious lust for guts, gallantry, fame and money and their disposition towards vendetta when the prize is won. However, most Nigerians feel strongly that they should move the country forward with the more progressive, truly democratic countries of the world and just connive at the nationally suicidal democratic aberration that was known within Nigeria’s top military circle as the horse riders and the horse.
- Asinugo is the publisher of Imo State Business Link Magazine (imostateblm.com)