By Douglas Anele

Specifically, memories of the traumatic years of 1985 to 1993 have faded because of the solvent of time, whereas Obasanjo’s failures (and successes) are more vivid in our imagination due to the fact that his tenure ended just four years ago, in 2007.

But with some effort, aided by perusal of negative media reports published about Babangida’s government when the self-styled military president was in power, it is still possible for average Nigerians to remember, reconstruct or possibly re-experience imaginatively the nightmarish feelings they had during his dictatorship.

The upshot of our brief critique of Babangida’s criticism of Obasanjo is that Babangida himself, given the hardships he inflicted on Nigerians between 1985 and 1993, is not on a moral high ground to criticise other Nigerian leaders.

That is not to say that Babangida has no right to criticise his predecessors or successors; we are not even suggesting that Obasanjo’s performance in 1999-2007 is worthy of emulation by others. We are simply saying that Babangida’s diatribe is a case of pot calling the kettle black, so to speak, which has very little credibility.

On the question of Obasanjo and his contribution to national development, it is clear that as military head of state his achievements were merely satisfactory, probably because he ruled for about three-and-half years.

As Toyo indicated in his book referred to earlier, Obasanjo, like General Park Chung Hee of South Korea who pioneered his country’s industrial transformation, had the ambition to bring Nigeria into the comity of industrialised countries.

The dams, power plant, steel rolling mill, and other heavy industries either completed or began between by his military government support Toyo’s claim. However, in his “second coming”, he appeared to have lost his former ambition for the rapid industrialisation of Nigeria.

Obasanjo and members of the ruling cabal failed to utilise wisely increased oil revenue that accrued to the country during his tenure as a civilian President, notwithstanding the disruptive activities of militants in oil-producing communities of Niger Delta.

However, it would be wrong to ignore the achievements of Obasanjo’s economic team lead by Charles Soludo and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The consolidation of Nigerian banks and repayment of billions of dollars the country owed to members of the Paris Club are exemplary in this regard.

Also noteworthy is the establishment of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and  Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission, two anti-graft bodies created to fight corruption and financial rascality in the public and private sectors of our national life. EFCC and ICPC recorded some limited successes in the anti-corruption drive of Obasanjo.

The former President partially succeeded in reshaping the military and police for improved security nationwide, although his handling of the security challenges posed by the militants was generally unsatisfactory. But despite these achievements, Obasanjo failed to significantly reduce egregious corruption at the topmost levels of governance, to the extent that Nigeria still retained its poor record as a byword for graft. It appears that Obasanjo interfered a lot in the work of EFFCC, thereby compromising the efficiency and professionalism of the commission.

The gross impunity of Obasanjo’s presidency is gradually becoming manifest through the testimonies of Nasir el-Rufai and other former directors-general of Bureau of Public Enterprises. At the recently concluded hearings by the Senate Ad hoc Committee on Privatisation, el-Rufai and others declared that Obasanjo and Atiku Abubakar, his Vice-President, meddled too much in the affairs of the bureau as if it was their personal property.

Not to be forgotten in a hurry, of course, are the sordid revelations from an investigation by the last House of Representatives’ Committee on Power that the Obasanjo government paid billions of dollars for shoddy contracts in the energy sector without tangible results. Politically speaking, Obasanjo has a slight edge over Babangida. Babangida organised a relatively credible presidential election on June 12, 1993, as we noted already. But he aborted the process by annulling the results.

Obasanjo was in charge in 2003 when he vied for a second term of office. The elections held that year were seriously marred by all sorts of electoral malpractices. Thus, in one case the outcome of a credible electoral process was cancelled for obscure, self-serving reasons; in the other the results of flawed elections were allowed to stand. All things considered objectively, we can state that for the reasons presented in this essay and others that could be unearthed by more detailed investigation, Babangida’s government was worse than the civilian administration of Obasanjo.

Indeed, there is some truth in the claim that Babangida left Nigeria worse than he met it in August 27, 1985, whereas Obasanjo left a marginally improved country in 2007. There is no point beating about the bush on this matter, or pretending that of the two mediocre leaders none is worse than the other. Hypocritical VIP Nigerians who create the impression that the brickbat between Obasanjo and Babangida is of national importance should stop behaving like sympathisers who, for ulterior motives, mourn more than the bereaved.

The average Nigerian is too preoccupied with existential battle for bare survival, and is not bothered at all by altercations between two multi-millionaires whose mediocre leadership made things quite difficult for the suffering masses. As a matter of fact, he would want the verbal war to continue, because the combatants may inadvertently reveal some important hidden details of their poor stewardship.

At all events, Nigeria cannot truly overcome the follies of its recent history until former leaders, including Babangida and Obasanjo, are made to account for their stewardship, or lack of it. For too long, Nigerians seem to be incapable of rising up in unison to demand justice from their leaders. That is why folly, if care is not taken, will continue to be the defining characteristic of Nigerian leadership.

Concluded.