Last week, former President Olusegun
Obasanjo was in Bayelsa State preaching love. He went at the
instance of the State Governor, Seriake Dickson who wanted him (since the
incumbent president is not readily available for such task) to commission
projects built by the state government as part of the activities to mark the
sixth anniversary of the government of Dickson in the state.
Obasanjo did a little more outside the
official schedule. By some arrangement, he was appropriated to lay the
foundation stone of the second private refinery after Dangote’s, but the first
in that region of the country, penultimate Saturday.
The Azikel Modular
Refinery sitting on about 20 hectares is being powered by Dr. Eruani
Azibapu Goodbless, President of Azikel Group in collaboration with foreign
partners.
The reception for the former president was good. Governor Dickson described him as a lover of Bayelsa and its people who, while as President appointed and retained as petroleum minister, a man from Bayelsa State, Dr. Edmund Daukoru, now the Amananyabo of Nembe Kingdom.
And when he was given
a chance to comment on the proposed refinery, King Daukoru, who is said to know
everything about oil and gas agreed almost entirely with that position of
eminence in Bayelsa affairs bestowed on Obasanjo by the governor. He broke
traditional protocols and called Obasanjo “my mentor” and with a slight bow to
underscore point.
There was real effort
to establish Obasanjo as a friend of the Niger Delta. The audience even
acquiesced and applauded intermittently to every high point, perhaps, more
out of courtesy than conviction. Obasanjo rose gallantly to the occasion and
refused to be contained. He enjoyed the accolades even when he knew that most
of it was undeserved.
He is the Baba who
cannot be challenged in any setting. Not even King Diete-Spiff, the Amananyabo
of Brass Twon, who perhaps is senior to Obasanjo in the military, could remind
the ex-president of his most copious sin against the Ijaw.
And so on this very
day in Gbaran Kingdom, the heart of Ijaw land, Obasanjo assumed the
podium to tell an audience of mainly Ijaws that in Nigeria, people could
control their resources but need strangers to manage same efficiently for their
benefit.
“I said, yes, you can
control your resources but I have to manage them for the benefit of everybody”
he said gleefully and in a manner that suggested he could not have been faulted
on his decision on resource control and fiscal federalism while he was
president.
The Ibinanowei of
Gbaran Kingdom HRM King Sunpere Akeh and other royal fathers present, including
Kings Diete-Spiff and Daukoru and Governor Dickson did not say anything.
If anything, they all
seemed too ready to adopt Obasanjo as a big son of Ijaw land, especially when
he added that he would discontinue medical checks abroad and come to the state
hospital in Yenagoa, which he described as excellent.
The thing about Baba
is that he manages all the time to speak as if he has no other interest than
the greatness of Nigeria in all the things he says and does.
For instance, in
creating his presidential library and legacy resort inAbeokuta his home
town from huge public subscriptions, it was the interest
of Nigeria that was uppermost in his mind. It was in the national
interest when he supported ailing Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to become President.
So it was too, when
Obasanjo turned around 360 degrees and made it look as if he had nothing to do
with the dying Yar’Adua and worked assiduously for the ascendance of Goodluck
Jonathan as president. And today, it is in the national interest for him to say
no to the suitability of General Muhammadu Buhari as president in less than
three years after he said a very loud yes.
Give it to him,
Obasanjo has managed all of this so well and the national consensus as we speak
is that he is the only living patriot and nationalist in Nigeria.
The other thing that
has not been overtly stated but implied in all matters concerning Obasanjo is
that for his contributions to nation building, he has become some god, even
while still alive to be worshipped by all Nigerians irrespective of the
ethno-religious diversities.
And so on this day in
Bayelsa, it was the oracle talking and not necessarily Olusegun Obasanjo. This
is the only way to explain why nobody in the large audience questioned the
claim that resources in Nigeria could be owned by some who probably are less
endowed upstairs and then ‘managed efficiently’ by others that are better
endowed; specifically the federal government.
It is only an oracle
that can induce that depth of passivity among the people of the Niger Delta on
the vexed issue of resources ownership and their utilization in the manner it
was presented by Obasanjo.
Gbaran Kingdom where
the refinery is located and where Obasanjo made his big claim is few kilometers
from Amassoma, the home town of former governor of Bayelsa State, Chief DSP
Alamieyesegha, a respected Ijaw patriot, who until his sudden death on October
10 2015, was designated the governor-general of the Ijaw nation. About20
kilometres to the west of the location of the Azikel Refinery lies Odi in
Opokuma Kolokoma council area of Bayelsa. The stories of the late governor-general
and Odi town have so much to do with Obasanjo.
Following the killing
of 12 policemen by yet-to-be apprehended gunmen in Odi area in November 1999,
Obasanjo ordered troops into Odi to look for the killers. Nothing – lives and
properties – stood in the wake of the invasion.
In the end, Odi a
fishing town that is powered by the River Nun became a heap of rubbles. The
lamentations over the loss of Odi were loud in most parts of the world and even
in heaven but not loud enough till date to move Obasanjo into apologising for
the destruction.
For most of the 1999
to 2007 dispensation, Obasanjo stayed on the chest of Alamieyesegha like an
incubus. He instigated his impeachment by the State House of Assembly on
charges of corruption, prosecuted and jailed him.
The man
actually died from shocks of the news that the Federal Government under Buhari
was contemplating re-opening the corruption charge against him after he had
been granted presidential amnesty by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The other person who
shared same fate with Alamieyesegha in that dispensation is Chief James Onanefe
Ibori, former governor of Delta State, who, while running from prosecution at
home, jumped into a British dragnet in 2011 that kept him out of circulation
till only last year.
Both men were vocal
against Obasanjo in the contest for the control of the resources of the Niger
Delta and I can add that more for this reason than anything else, Alameiyesegha
and Ibori became the best and biggest faces to create the poster of corruption
in Nigeriabetween 1999 and 2007.
These are documented
facts, but as if under some spell on that day, nobody in the audience
remembered to invoke same to interrogate Obasanjo’s prodigious claim of love
for the Niger Delta and its people. Instead, he was applauded all the way
from GbaranKingdom through Yenagoa to Otuoke, where he was lavishly
hosted by Goodluck Jonathan, as if he (Jonathan) has got big plans for 2019 and
needed to purchase the blessings of the oracle of Nigerian politics.
And I say today that,
a great deal of the challenges in the Niger Delta are home made. They do not
have to do only with resource mining and all the issues that come with the fair
allocation of the arising benefits. More worrisome is a leadership that is
incapable of the kind of assertiveness that bestows respectability.
The other time, it
was Rotimi Amaechi who as governor invited Obasanjo to Port
Harcourt to add no particular value to the processes of governance in the
state, but to re-state the K-leg theory that attended the politics
of Rivers State in 2007.
The leaders of the
region are not only naïve but intellectually challenged. They think they need
more than themselves to lead.
Consequently, they
are ever on missions to secure dubious endorsements of some rogue leaders of
the majority groups. They sponsor the big dinner (presidential elections) with
huge resources from the region and thereafter stay under the table to pick-up
crumbs. They should wake up!
By Abraham Ogbodo
*Mr. Ogbodo is the
Editor of The Guardian
Comments
Post a Comment