ONU JOHN ONWE 
General Olusegun Obasanjo’s place and position in Nigerian history is of stellar quality and well above average in Nigeria’s concentric circles of the cult of mediocrity unfurled by riveting concatenated historical epochs that shaped the birth and development of Nigeria.
Obasanjo was thrown up for leadership during Nigeria’s unfortunate civil and military troubles between 1966 and 1970. General Obasanjo had been chosen by General Gowon in 1968/1969 to replace Brigadier-General Benjamin Adekunle who had commanded the 3rd Marine Commando taking charge of Southern sector of the Biafra War between 1967 and 1968.
After the Biafra war, General Obasanjo became one of the members of the victorious allies and enthroned as a worthy representative of the Yoruba, the other arm of the dual coalition that defeated Biafra.
General Obasanjo enjoyed this trust because apart from his military command, he was amenable to the dictates of the dominant ruling coalition controlled by the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy even though it was the Middle-Belt minorities upon whose shoulders the Nigeria’s military war effort was largely hoisted.
Many players in these concentric circles of doom are in most cases ignorant of their circumstances and are oblivious of the forces tossing them around aimlessly. Of all Nigerian rulers, General Obasajo is the most knowledgeable, sincere, patriotic and seemingly impervious to ethnic or religious biases.
He is a balanced personality who does not dissemble over his opinions about Nigeria and the roles of members of Nigeria’s leadership cult. But by 1975, General Murtala Mohammed had been thoroughly disgusted by Gowon’s rule and doubly so by the jockeying for power which Gowon and some Southern minority-members of his government such as Anthony Enahoro and some governors such as Ukpabi Asika of East Central State, Ogbemudia, Diette-spiff, Gomwalk, and some super-permanent secretaries had toyed with and even secretly mooted the idea of Gowon transmuting to civil rule or sponsoring a southern minority to inherit the throne.
It was this jockeying for power that made Murtala Mohammed to challenge Gowon and encouraged his boys (Lt. Col. Shehu Yar’Adua and Col. Joseph Garba) to spearhead Gowon’s overthrow which was accomplished on July 29, 1975.
At the overthrow of Gowon, General Murtala Mohammed became Head of State with Obasanjo as his deputy. General Mohammed quickly seized the moment to unfurl the hidden agenda that had lurked in Hausa-Fulani oligarchy’s mind and which agenda was the restoration of Lugard state structure and constitutional framework dislocated by Gowon’s emergence and within six months the agenda was accomplished when he created 19 state-structure with the North having 10 to South’s 9 to restore North’s political superiority.
The Indirect Rule system-structure was restored with the 1976 Uniform Local Government System and completed with the imposition of emirate system of traditional rulership with the economic system changed by introducing the Northern Region’s 1916 Native Land Ordinance that adopted the Sokoto Caliphate feudal land ownership system that divested the people of their radical title to land making them mere “occupier” with their rights subject to the pleasure of the governor or local government chairman.
This feudal land ownership system encapsulated in the Land Use Decree, 1978 bolstered the feudal economic system unfurled over Nigeria from 1969 when all mineral assets were corralled and vested in the Federal Military Government with derivation principle of revenue allocation abolished and a common economic and financial trough created to feed the federal, states and local governments.
It was under this fearsome political flux that General Obasanjo emerged when Middle-Belt officers led by Col. BS Dimka attempted overthrow of Murtala Mohammed but failed. General Obasanjo emerged as Head of State with Lt. Col-Shehu Yar’Adua, in a most clumsy process thrown up above his superiors to deputise General Obasanjo and keep an eye on him.
General Obasanjo lacking military constituency submitted and faithfully carried out Mohammed’s agenda. After his military rule tenure, General Obasanjo became Nigerian and international statesman always ready to speak out against any perceived misrule or error. It was in discharge of this noble role that he offended General Sani Abacha and nearly lost his life when he was tried and convicted for coup attempt.
Between 1993 and 1999, Northern military autocrats ran Nigeria aground and the country was tottering at the brink when General Abdulsalam Abubakar having taken over from General Abacha who died in office quickly brought out General Obasanjo from prison and foisted him on PDP, one of the military government-created parties and elected him president on an instrument of civil government they called Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999. General Obasanjo ruled for eight years and handed over to a successor. But despite Obasanjo’s
Let those who are holding the Igbo down listen to General Obasanjo to set themselves and Nigeria free
efforts, Nigeria has been quaking with multifarious problems greater than the post-independence and post-Biafra War years as unity has collapsed making all the tribes to recoil to their tribal cocoons. Religion has not just been begotted; it has even degenerated to sectarian warfare. Politics is not only prebendal, it is kleptocratic.
Against all these troubles, the ancient regime that took control of Nigeria since 1960 and entrenched after 1966- 1970 troubles has vowed that Nigeria can never be reworked for the good of its people rather it must remain in its troubled state unchanged. And it has vowed that the Igbo that was forced by the troubles of 1966 to seek refuge in their own nation-state and lost that quest can never rule Nigeria as if they are the owners of Nigeria.
It is against the background of this imperious grandstanding by the Hausa-Fulani that General Obasajo has been counseling this bellicose group that their stand is unsupportable by history, commonsense and justice.
General Obasanjo as an elder who has seen it all never ceases to counsel national reconciliation and rebirth of Nigeria by mutual forgiveness and a determined resolve to build Nigeria on the platter of common citizenship, freedom, brotherhood and justice.
General Obasanjo had seized the opportunity of the visit of the League of Northern Democrats led by former Governor Shekarau to reiterate the need for national reconciliation, forgiveness and rebirth for Nigeria to move forward.
What are holding Nigeria down are the deadweight of neocolonialism and the contradictory forces of multi-ethnic nation-state whose charter of governance is so primitive and burdensome that the creative forces of society are held down and immobilized.
Without the constituent ethnic groups openly and consciously agreeing to enter into a union of equals committed to build a nation-state of common citizenship and to uphold the freedoms and tenets of justice, there can never be peace and progress.
General Obasanjo was of this mindset (that’s regarding and treating the Igbo as conquered people) before now when he declared in 2007 at one of Bayelsa State PDP ceremonies that the Igbo clamour to become president was hasty as it took the Southern states of USA almost 50 years to become president.
But I think, he has changed from that conquistadorian mindset and now reasons as a statesman who ought to know that a victorious wrestler who pinned his opponent down to the ground in a wrestling match holds himself down as well and can only free himself from such mortal entanglement by freeing his defeated opponent. Let those who are holding the Igbo down listen to General Obasanjo to set themselves and Nigeria free.
