General Olusegun Obasanjo and the Burden of History
“The primary responsibility of any government is the protection of lives and property. When a government cannot deliver that, citizens have the right to seek help from the international community.” — Olusegun Obasanjo, Premium Times
When I watched General Olusegun Obasanjo standing before the crowd in Jos, speaking with the trembling fire of a man pretending to rediscover truth, my stomach growled with disgust and shame. His words were accurate like the dishonest theatrics of an actor, yet the mouth from which they fell was drenched in contradiction and hypocrisy. It was like watching a man who set fire to burn down his own house to ashes and then shout to the neighbours that the heat is unbearable. His speech sounded passionate like what is expected from a patriotic elder statesman, but truth spoken without honest memory is deception, and to knowingly distort history without self accountability is treason against the soul of a nation.
Obasanjo was lifted by Providence, spared by destiny, and placed at a crossroads meant for national rebirth. Like Joseph was pulled from prison to rule Egypt, he too was brought from penitentiary into power. But unlike Joseph, he refused to prosecute the original assignment. Nigeria opened her arms. The people opened their hope. Providence opened the door. And Obasanjo shut his heart. He was sent to restore the federal covenant of 1959 — the only legitimate agreement that ever bound the living nations of Nigeria into one common political home. Instead of restoring fairness and balance to the polity, he fortified the chains of injustice. Instead of freeing the ethnic nations, he deepened their captivity. He inherited the staff of a redeemer and wielded it like a conquering general.
The federal covenant was broken by the military in 1966 and sealed further into oblivion by Obasanjo in 1999. Nigeria did not fall because fate turned its back; Nigeria fell because powerful men turned theirs. The 1959 agreement was a sacred pact. The military shattered it. Obasanjo cemented the shattering. He could have reversed the structural injury. He could have returned Nigeria to its agreed federal equilibrium. He chose not to. A betrayal of covenant always returns—not as cherished memory, but as punitive judgment.
Now he stands before microphones lamenting government failure, declaring that citizens may seek help from the international community. How does a man denounce the very ruins built by his own hands? His lamentation without remorse, repentance and a plea for forgiveness is a performance cloaked in immoral audacity. A doctor who kills a patient cannot turn around to lecture the family on the ethics of medicine. It is tasteless, classless, and shameless.
The tragedy is watching a once-powerful general drift around the nation like a wandering voice, lamenting a catastrophe he co-authored. A man who once held the master key to Nigeria’s future now rattles the very gates he helped lock. He was crowned for national reform but chose personal empire. He was raised for liberation but chose domination. He was entrusted with the rebirth of a brand new nation but chose the centralisation of archaic political and economic structures. History does not forget such betrayals, even when the people do.
Nigeria’s darkness was engineered by falling men, not inherited from natural design. The crisis is not divine punishment, not a mysterious curse—it is brought by the self indulgent policy of soulless compatriots. It is an architecture designed to enrich selfishness. It is betrayal. From 1966 till now, Nigeria was shaped into a failing structure: a centre too bloated to function properly, regions too weakened to govern themselves, resources too centralised to provide equity, and a constitution too illegitimate to inspire loyalty.
Obasanjo’s speech is a confession disguised as criticism. Beneath the performance lies the truth: Nigeria is a failed sovereign construct, incapable of performing its basic duties. But the collapse he condemns is rooted in the foundation he refused to repair or rebuild. His speech does not showcase patriotism. It demonstrates the self-indictment of a dishonest and shameless man.
Nigeria’s golden hour came in 1999, and Obasanjo slept through it. He entered office with everything a reformer dreams of—unity, goodwill, legitimacy, support—and still chose the intoxicating echo of personal power of the megalomaniac. History offered him redemption and restoration; he chose empire and personal aggrandisement. Nations suffer deeply for such shallow-minded choices.
Today, Nigeria wanders through a valley of darkness chasing shadows without the benefit of inspiration or imagination; wading through bloody violence that is thick as mud; battling corruption embedded like bone in the flesh; fighting hunger pang that humiliates a freeborn endowed with inestimable natural resources; and seeing the hopelessness carved into the eyes of the youth and unable to do anything about it. This is not accidental chaos. This is consequence of the lawless acts of dishonourable elites. It is what betrayal looks like when it matures into national calamity.
A nation cannot rise on a broken covenant. A state cannot survive on a constitution born of force and deceit. Truth spoken without repentance is still deception. Nigeria will not be restored by the hands that chained her for fleecing. The future belongs to those who refuse to inherit the blindness of their fathers and forefathers. The covenant that the Nigeria’s founding fathers agreed to in 1959 must be restored, the nations must be reborn, the structures rebuilt, and the truth must be spoken — even to the guilty who still walk among us pretending not to know or understand the consequences of their perfidious deeds.
We fervently wish the indigenous peoples of Nigeria would begin to earnestly embark on revolutionary actions towards the rediscovery of the precious souls of both the individual self and of the collective nations. And to solemnly agree on a new pledge within ourselves that we shall henceforth embark on the Herculean challenges of recovering — sooner than later — all the stolen resources and wasted time from the dishonourable MisLeaders among us.
The omen for the future of a restructured and rebuilt Nigeria is still shining bright and favourable if only everyone in the polity can make honest efforts to embrace truth and justice as the fundamental principles of our sociopolitical engagements and socioeconomic endeavours.
It Shall Be Well and It Is Well.
In The Spirit of Truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
ITSOT 