Nigeria’s Political Drama: Obasanjo’s Third Term Controversy

In any record of the history of this colonially designated nation, Nigeria, the Olusegun Obasanjo phenomenon would undoubtedly hold a prominent place. This magnificent nation was ruled by him both as a military and civilian leader.

In the history of the nation’s public service, he is a sui generis rabble-rouser because of his renowned mischievous behavior, deeds and inactions, and self-centered attitude.

While in power, Obasanjo thought he knew everything, despite the fact that millions of his compatriots who were politically astute thought his self-perception was inflated. He continues to think that individuals in charge of the state are inept, dishonest, and confused even when they are not in positions of authority. Again, if this is accurate, it can be linked to Obasanjo’s uncontrollable pettiness, arrogance, and greedy approach to government as the first president of Nigeria’s ongoing democratic experiment, particularly since the start of this democratic era in 1999.

Dully, other verdicts are inappropriate, with the exception of Obasanjo’s. He makes every effort to avoid answering questions on his Third Term Agenda, which is understandable. Numerous concrete evidences of point-men in the former president’s administration using hundreds of millions of naira to bribe members of the National Assembly still cast doubt on Obasanjo’s already shaky reputation. In fact, a number of former members of the National Assembly who were disgusted by Obasanjo’s falsehoods frequently acknowledged that they had obtained the slush money intended to entice them. Despite Obasanjo’s best efforts to make his public denials matter, his conscience, as his main tormentor, causes him to experience terrifying stress.

If not, what better way to characterize Obasanjo’s recent warning to African presidents against attempts to extend their terms in office? Sad to say, he is still without a doubt the continent’s most famous architect of failed tenure extensions.

Yours truly reads with dismay what Obasanjo allegedly stated during a Democracy Dialogue held in Accra, Ghana, recently by the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation. Toward the close of his second term as Nigeria’s president, he was reported to have shamelessly rejected the open secret truth that he wanted tenure extension, sometimes known as the Third Term Agenda.

He disputed this, saying, “I’m not an idiot. I would know how to approach getting a third term. I contacted him and told him I wanted a third term, but no Nigerian, living or dead, would claim that. He also allegedly stated that, despite the fact that the PDP, the political party that put him in power, and his close friends as president were actively working to advance the controversial idea, he valued the debt relief he had successfully won for the nation more than any Third Term Agenda.

Obasanjo’s challenge to any “living or dead Nigerian” reveals his nightmare mindset because he is aware that most people who are aware of that vile goal never take him seriously when he says his nonsense about that disastrous plan.

According to reports, Obasanjo was at his most disingenuous when he said that believing in “one’s indispensability” is a “sin against God.” The fact that he played God, wanted, and planned his disastrous Third Term nonsense is something that our own esteemed Catholic Bishop, Mathew Hassan Kukah, and others at the conversation failed to warn him of.

The fact that the organizers of such a significant democratic discourse invited an Obasanjo who, as president, never concealed his contempt for democratic principles is a farce and a misnomer, don’t you think? During his two tenure as president of this nation, Obasanjo oversaw a civilian administration that demonstrated the worst disdain for democratic principles.

Constitutional and traditional state institutions were of no importance to Obasanjo. Obasanjo’s presidentially discerning body language and assent allowed for the biggest electoral violations to occur in the nation during Professor Maurice Iwu’s tenure as head of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Even his successor, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, acknowledged in public the flaws in Obasanjo’s well-run election that put him in power.

During Obasanjo’s tenure in office, anti-democratic practices including as ballot stuffing, election fraud and manipulation, electioneering and political rascality, and political party imposition were common and evidently escalated.

To his dismay, Obasanjo acted as though Nigeria would cease to exist without him, yet it does. Several senators were overthrown by him, and he proclaimed states of emergency in states whose governors refused to follow his autocratic orders: During the height of Obasanjo’s autocratic leadership, Ahmadu Alli, the national chairman of the People’s Democratic Party at the time, boldly announced that the PDP will govern Nigeria for the ensuing 60 years.

However, God stepped in, and soon after the National Assembly cut short Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda in 2006, a group of national opposition parties banded together to overthrow the naive and arrogant PDP in 2015.

I chose to look up information on Wikipedia in an attempt to uncover the suppressed sadness that General Obasanjo has been fighting over his abandoned Third Term Agenda, which he attempts to refute whenever possible. The nightmare that Nigeria’s former military-turned-civilian ruler is currently dealing with was first revealed from that point on. “That is frequently connected to unresolved anxiety and trauma that our brain has not fully worked through,” according to Wikipedia, is what a nightmare is. According to additional analysis conducted elsewhere, Obasanjo’s dreams concerning his unsuccessful campaign for a third term may be the result of his “unmet psychological needs and/or frustration.”

“Dreams that are often connected to unresolved anxiety and trauma that our brain has not fully worked through” is how clinician Jacky Casumbal defines nightmares. Obasanjo must have been questioning and agonizing his place as a statesman every day he woke up from his slumber, and Justin Alcala’s wording of “dissatisfied reality” perfectly sums up his failed Third Term agenda.

In her book The Spiritualist, Megan Chance further simplifies this by claiming that people like Obasanjo have nightmares because they “run from what they feel” and that the only way to escape the madness that denial causes them is to “own up to their misgivings.” Obasanjo’s vanity prevents him from admitting his doubts about his third term.

Obasanjo’s unresolved feelings regarding his abandoned Third Term agenda can only be remedied by preventing him from having any more nightmares about it. This is possible if he face the hard realities that come with his dishonest denial of the agenda he covertly fostered but abandoned in the National Assembly’s sacred halls in 2006.

Instead, whenever inquiries about that troubling period in his leadership history are made, Obasanjo has brazenly perpetuated his puerile dismissive remarks. He becomes needlessly defensive during these times and tells blatant lies that further undermine his alleged leadership value in Nigeria, Africa, and world politics in general.

Obasanjo’s deceit in rejecting his ambition for a third term can never be forgiven, even in light of the current administration’s commendable decision to reinstate history as a subject in the national curriculum. In Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State, the Balogun of Owu made every effort to wipe the nation’s political past, particularly the more recent and not-so-recent periods. It was his administration that unnecessarily eliminated history instruction from the curriculum. for personal gain!

In order for many Nigerians aged forty and under to be unaware of his involvement in the demonization of the late Aare MKO Abiola, the victor of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, he intends to evade significant historical record. He didn’t want the forgetful and historically grieving Nigerians to know that his military constituency used his presidential candidacy to appease the resentful South-West Yoruba people, who were deeply hurt by the annulment of the June 12 presidential election and the subsequent plot to remove their kinsman, Abiola, from the face of the planet.

Furthermore, Obasanjo did not want Nigerians to know how he suppressed their democratic aspirations in some states of the federation where, among other things, INEC, directed by Professor Maurice Iwu, carried out an absurd electoral process that was rife with election fraud.

Students will now learn about Obasanjo’s sabotage of democratic institutions and his treatment of the governors of his era as though they were his errand boys, now that history is being taught in schools again. Our pupils will learn about Obasanjo’s high-handed selection of candidates for election and how he planned the unilateral removal of any governors who defied his self-serving directives during his reign, destroying internal democracy in both his and other political parties.

Obasanjo didn’t give a damn about what other people thought. In the country, he permitted electoral heists against prominent politicians running for president and governor. The governors of Oyo, Ekiti, Plateau, Bayelsa, Delta, Lagos, and Ogun states in 1999—Rashid Ladoja, Ayo Fayose, Joshua Dariye, Diepreye Alamieyesiegha, James Ibori, and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu—were among those he persecuted.

Because he performed all of these things and nothing changed, he believed that the next step was to completely enslave Nigerians by playing with the infamous notion of extending his tenure in office. Through their resolute federal lawmakers, led by Senator Ken Nnamani, who was the Senate president at the time, Nigerians rejected his disastrous Third Term proposal, which, as it stands today, would continue to haunt Balogun Obasanjo.