“How can Nigeria make any progress with thieves like Obasanjo, Melaye?” Pius Adesanmi

29th Jan. 2016

Mixed reactions have continued to trail the letter by former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to the National Assembly members.

Professor Pius Adesanmi shares his views on why Nigeria’s progress is impossible.

Olusegun Obasanjo is one of graduates of Nigeria’s Federal University of Corruption

Nigerian, you already know by now that Baba Olusegun Obasanjo recently wrote a letter to the National Assembly, calling them names and accusing them of corruption. That the National Assembly has been Nigeria’s most notorious assembly of integrity-challenged and irresponsible thieves since 1999 is no news to you. It is also the retirement home of expired looters from the executive. If you are looking for the highest number of indicted Africans in one single room, go to Nigeria’s National Assembly.

It is also no news to you, Nigerian, that the author of the latest letter, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, is one of the most illustrious and successful graduates of Nigeria’s Federal University of Corruption in Abuja. He was admitted into this University as a student in 1999 with less than five thousand naira in his account. He graduated a multibillionaire in 2007. The PhD in Corruption he obtained from this University is not honoris causa. He earned it.

What should be strange to you, Nigerian, is why one thief has found it expedient to write a letter to another set of thieves. You are writing Saraki and company to tell them to do something about corruption. You might as well write a cat with a view to negotiating with it to stop consuming rats.

Between Baba Obasanjo and Senator Dino Melaye

Enter the garrulous Senator Dino Melaye with a response to Obasanjo.

Nigerian, although Senator Dino Melaye is a clown unworthy of serious public disquisition at this level, I have brought you his words that you may understand the enormity of the task ahead of us; that you may understand why Nigeria may never make progress unless we somehow are able to produce and enable a new generation of young Nigerians whose paradigms have not been destroyed by the generations represented by the two clowns on display here.

Between Baba Obasanjo and Senator Dino Melaye, we have three generations of ruinous, leprous, and intellectually impecunious leaders.

Let us start with Dino Melaye’s closing statements. This corrupt and ostentatious clown dares to disclose that he is against corruption anywhere in Nigeria? Helloooo, Dino! Haba! You are a pro-corruption activist, always playing supporters’club for corruption at the CCT. Between Toyin Saraki and Bukola Saraki, we have seen your life outside as a career body guard for corruption.

But that is even not the real tragedy. The real tragedy, Nigerian, is that a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria stands up in that Chamber of Shame to declare to the whole world that Obasanjo had bribed his predecessors in the Senate to actualize his third term agenda and is only now writing because he has not yet forgiven those who took his money and failed to deliver.

Tradition of Nigerians begging a thief to forgive other thieves

In other words, a Senator is implying that he does not know that it is against the law in Nigeria to induce, give, or receive bribes? A Senator is accusing a former President of having committed a very serious crime of corrupting an institution of the Federal Republic in Nigeria and all he has to say is to appeal to the criminal to pardon the criminals who looted his loot?

How about you and your colleagues collaborating with the current Executive to revisit the issue you are talking about with a view to punishing the giver of that third term bribe and those who received it by making them face the wrath of the law and due process? Abi you think there is a statute of limitation on Obasanjo’s crimes and the crimes of your predecessors in the Senate?

Anyway, this tradition of Nigerians begging a thief to forgive other thieves or to go and sin no more is a macabre dance in which Obasanjo had been implicated in the past. Dino is in a funny way replaying Obasanjo’s script.

After Okija, after destroying Government House in Anambra, Chris Uba had finally dragged his political son, Chris Ngige, to Obasanjo in the Villa. After the meeting, Obasanjo announced to the nation that the two thieves came to report themselves to him. They revealed to him how they conspired to rig and steal the election in Anambra and how Ngige had subsequently reneged on his yam commitments to his benefactor, Chris Uba. Obasanjo told the nation how he scolded them:

I called them thieves. I kicked them. Mo ba won wi gidi gan ni o. And I made them promise not to do so again o.

Anyway, Nigerian, you see your life outside now? You see the level of fevered and kwashiokored brains running your life? How can a country make any progress with these kinds of characters?

Yet, let Obasanjo and Dino arrive in your neighbourhood in a motorcade today, you will outdo one another in seeking photo-ops with them.

The only consequence they get for their crimes is your adulation and they know it!

Pius Adesanmi is the director of Carleton University’s Institute of African Studies, Ottawa, Canada. In 2010, he was awarded the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing. A widely-cited commentator on Nigerian and African affairs, he has lectured in African, European, and North American universities, and also regularly addresses non-academic audiences across Africa. Follow him on Twitter @pius_adesanmi.




Pix; Pius Adeyemi

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