“I respect Baba Obasanjo for his accomplishments but sir, you are a human being and susceptible to making mistakes. Admit your errors and stop twisting narratives”.
BY RICHARD AKINOLA
In 2008, when Baba Obasanjo spoke about Atiku Abubakar not being loyal to him, l called Garba Shehu, who was then Atiku’s spokesperson, drawing his attention to what Obasanjo said.
Garba said he would want me to meet with Atiku to state his own part. He arranged for a breakfast meeting in Lagos.
At the meeting, l asked him to respond to Obasanjo’s allegation. He said he wouldn’t go into details of other instances of his loyalty but would mention just two.
In 1995, when Abacha wanted to arrest him over the phantom coup, Atiku said he got the intel and rushed to Ota to hint Obasanjo, asking him to leave the country immediately. Shortly thereafter, Obasanjo was arrested.
The second instance, Atiku said was when his leader, Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua (retd) was forcefully injected in prison by “Dr death”, a Lt-Col. He said Yar’Adua contacted him to inform him of the strange injection when he was not ill (which eventually led to his death in prison). Atiku said he immediately dispatched a message to Obasanjo in Yola prison not to allow himself to be injected in case “Dr death” came to him. Eventually, when “Dr death” came to see Obasanjo, Atiku said Obasanjo told him he shouted: “I’m not sick o, I’m not sick o”. And that was how he escaped being injected to death.
Atiku now concluded that if he was not loyal but saved him from death, he wondered what loyalty meant.
My challenge with baba Obasanjo is his penchant for twisting narratives to suit his purpose. Imagine him coming to write a rejoinder to Aremo Segun Osoba, six years after Osoba’s published memoirs. I recall how Brigadier Alabi Isama (retd) took him to the cleaners in his (Alabi’s war memoir) in reply to what he felt was Obasanjo’s vainglorious “false” narrative on the civil war.
If Baba Obasanjo, at the twilight of his life, cannot summon the courage to admit errors in respect of the failed third term bid, l wonder what else he would say that one would believe.
I was the one that first raised the alarm on the third term bid, in an interview l granted the INSIDER WEEKLY magazine edition of November 8, 2004. Thereafter, the third term events moved at frenetic speed, first with the police and SSS, sealing the Ladi Kwali hall of Sheraton hotel, Abuja where the third term coalition was supposed to meet. Then, to bribing of many legislators with N50 million each. Even Nelson Mandela cautioned him not to attempt it. But as the Yoruba would say, you cannot call dog as monkey for us.
I respect Baba Obasanjo for his accomplishments but sir, you are a human being and susceptible to making mistakes. Admit your errors and stop twisting narratives.
…Richard Akinnola, a journalist, lawyer and public commentator is based in Lagos
