The trials of General Obasanjo

THESE must be trying times for former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Scandalous stories of corruption and abuse of office, which allegedly took place under his administration, are carried in the press virtually daily, plus recurrent clamours for a judicial investigation of his eight-year rule. But whereas many of his admirers are expressing shock at the allegations, the man himself continues to feign unruffled innocence.

Yet, some of the crimes for which he may conceivably be arraigned, have the potential of sending the former president to a penitentiary for the rest of his life, or even to the gallows. These crimes include economic crimes and crimes against humanity (e.g. Odi and Zaki Biam), or even ultimate responsibility for political assassinations (like those of Harry Marshall and Bola Ige), which were carried out during his rule, and for which the PDP over which he presided, became known as a "nest of murderers".

Owing to the kind of society we live in, the possibility of being brought to justice is, arguably, the least of Obasanjo's worries. Nigeria has no tradition of making its rulers accountable, whether in or out of office. Nor are the law-enforcement agencies independent of the executive and the coalition of oligarchs who hold the Nigerian state in thrall. Hence, successive "loot-and-go" rulers retire into their castle redoubts to enjoy their booty in peace, while fomenting new schemes to tighten the hold of their class on power, and thus on the country's wealth. But it would, perhaps, not be enough to make only former rulers like Obasanjo answerable for what they did in public office. A comprehensive remedy against immunity from being called to account, which has become a pervasive culture, both in public life and in society, needs to be found.

Thus, rulers and public officials, plus their wives who become ad hoc NGO promoters; legislators who share out unspent ministry allocations and award themselves allowances that compete with what our rulers swindle from the treasury; the electoral umpire who betrays the country and goes round smugly boasting about his treachery; or the founder/owners of commercialised religious empires, solely administering their churches' untaxed wealth - all should be relieved of the impunity which covers their deeds. And the constitution should no longer permit legislators to double as contractors drawing millions of naira for nebulous "Constituency Projects" which are never audited.

One explanation for the culture of impunity is the fragile state of the rule of law in society. After colonialism had destroyed or disrupted the indigenous polities and superseded them with the contraption called Nigeria, the next imperative was the sustenance of imperial rule through the enforcement of colonial law and order. But, colonial law and order did not necessarily socialise the people of Nigeria to the culture of the rule of law. Hence, today's rulers inherited the colonial state with its limitless power or coercion, but without a developed culture of accountability; and without being subject to either the precolonial or the new restraints imposed by the rule of law. Therefore, where an Obasanjo (if he had been king in old Oyo) would have been presented parrot eggs as a hint that he should "go to sleep", the retired tyrant routinely abused state power and institutions to oppress, to destroy democratic values, and to accumulate his obscene wealth, with scant consideration of any consequences.

There is, however, a type of "trials" that Obasanjo cannot escape, and which, indeed, he is already undergoing. Until May 2007, the former president was "lord of the Niger". Today, rueful and bemused, he contemplates the ruins of his egomaniacal and contorted schemes for eternal dominion over Nigeria. For, outside of power, he has become a masquerade stripped of his mask and costume, and abandoned - a naked impostor, instead of a god from the abode of the ancestral spirits. Where is the power that used to mimic the statesman and the reformist, while disdaining the rule of law? Where are the sycophants who gorged the former president with adulation and worship like a junkie primed with drugs? Or the opportunities for exploiting the president's exalted office to harvest "donations", and to parcel out the national patrimony among cronies? I daresay it is the loss of these privileges, rather than remorse, that is now torturing the former president's hedonistic soul.

Obasanjo's self-demystification and the vicissitudes attending his reputation are poignant lessons for making state institutions immune to abuse and perversion by would-be tyrants. How far the General's personal failings, his craving for worship, or his intolerance and infantile tantrums, are all due to congenital emotional instability, is a matter for psychologists. But, much as he strove to improve his education, he never learnt to rule himself, or to master his envy of those, like the late Awolowo or M.K.O. Abiola, whose achievements and endowments underscore his own mediocrity. And, if as a man he hardly reckons with scruples, as a politician he would do anything at all to attain his goal. Now, much that he laboured for are being undone by these fatal flaws: his aspiration for greatness has become a casualty of sacrificing the public good to the ignoble inclinations of self-centered ambition; just as his worship of mammon, while paying little heed to the concerns of the poor, has aborted the popular approval he had craved all his life.

Although it is doubtful that Obasanjo's credentials as a patriot can continue to be endorsed without reservation, whatever the Nigerian Baptist Convention might say, he did a few things whose impact will endure. Like loosening the military's stranglehold on the nation's jugular, even as he lacked the courage, the ability, or the ideological inclination to address Nigeria's structural and nation-building problems, many of which were authored or compounded by military political-adventurers, including Obasanjo himself. On balance, then, Obasanjo's rule was fundamentally exploitative and tainted by much that is evil. But it was nevertheless, somewhat like colonial rule, instructive and mitigated by palliatives (e.g. the EFCC and NAFDAC), unlike the total dissipation that characterised the barren and perverse Babangida era.

Ultimately, the tragedy of Obasanjo is the tragedy of the Nigerian nation-state. The power brokers who put him in office on the basis of his "patriotic" (i.e. self-serving) and reactionary politics, did so because they needed him to stabilise the status quo. Whatever they may now say, he preserved their mutual class interests, and every possibility of positive change was scuttled. But Nigeria's problems continue to fester. Those who venture to make a stand for change are either frustrated, or, like the late M.K.O. Abiola, made to pay for their audacity with their lives. But the apostles of the status quo hardly fare any better. With all their wealth they remain poor (where it matters) and of ill repute, like poor Nigeria itself, with all its endowed resources.