By Femi Odere
When the duo of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Pa Ayo Adebanjo attended the 70th birthday of Chief John Nwodo in Enugu on Sunday, December 11, 2022, we knew then that the die was already cast on the candidacy of Gregory Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate.
So, the former President’s issuance of a letter to formally declare his support for Peter Obi on Sunday, January I, 2023 l, was nothing more than a demonstration of his usual vacuous and ineffectual grandstanding on issues of national importance just to remain relevant.
It would be sheer waste of time and energy trying to interrogate the value of Obasanjo’s endorsement of Peter Obi, because it has absolutely none other than the optics which is, in itself, valueless.
Obasanjo cannot win his polling unit for Obi on election day, neither does he have any money to give him for effective prosecution of his campaign.
Rather, the letter, once again, reveals Obasanjo’s multiple personality, that’s separated into two or more distinct personalities, each with its own complex organization. This is what needs to be briefly interrogated.
Obasanjo’s excoriation of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for ‘Emi Lokan’ when, according to him “the solution should be in ‘we’ and ‘us’ and not in ‘me’ and ‘I’” is a laughable admonition of a teacher to his pupils to always do what he says and not what he does.
We wonder if there’s another Obasanjo elsewhere who, as President, announced to the world when he was introducing his newly appointed Special Advisers that they could be his advisers, but he was under no obligation whatsoever to take their advice.
Is it possible that it could have been a different Obasanjo who said Chief Bola Ige, his Minister of Power, after his death, that this highly credentialed international jurist “didn’t know his left from his right?” Who had demonstrated the mentality of “Me, Myself and I” between Tinubu and Obasanjo?
When Obasanjo said in his letter that “Obi has the edge over every other candidate in the race;” and that “he has people to call him to order when there is the need for that,” is another pointer, however subtle, to his inordinate, pathological restlessness to be in control of an unlikely Obi presidency. Obasanjo is a control freak. And evidences abound.
It’s already a known fact of this multiple personality (a disorder really) that Obasanjo detests anyone who has the innate leadership ability and competence that history is more likely to view above him. Even those that history had already rendered its verdict as the greatest of the few that had passed through the land such as Chiefs Obafemi Awolowo and MKO Abiola have been dismissed as inconsequential by Obasanjo.
That Obasanjo cannot see great leadership in Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is therefore not surprising. But he will have to get used to the superlative accomplishments on the way in the imminent Tinubu Presidency. God will spare his life to witness this occasion.
•Odere is spokesperson of
Tinubu/South-West Media Veterans Support Group.
