Obasanjo’s My Watch and other stories

CHUKS OLUIGBO

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s three-volume memoir, My Watch, presented to the public on Tuesday, 09 December, 2014, has elicited so much reaction, much like Chinua Achebe’s There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra. That is expected. That is the stuff history books are made of. For those who do not know, history is not shy of controversy. Indeed, history is a controversial subject that thrives in controversy – essentially because there is no shortcut to historical explanation, and “we remember differently”, to quote Chimamanda Adichie’s apt title to her tribute to Achebe at 82. As I wrote in “The Achebe phenomenon” at the peak of the controversy generated by There was a Country, quoting P. Olisanwuche Esedebe, emeritus professor of History at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, “Historical interpretations most times are based on a fraction of the evidence, a part of the whole, but so far as the arguments follow where the available material leads, they are valid. The often seemingly divergent conclusions in historical accounts are due to the different angles from which various historians approached the same episode.”

 

And so, given that various historians [read writers] are wont to approach the same episode from different angles, it presupposes that all major actors in a particular historical event are expected, as a matter of moral obligation and for the benefit of posterity, to document their own versions of the episode detailing, even if from their narrow perspectives, the part they and other actors around them played in the specific event at issue.

That was what Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu partly did in Because I am Involved; that was what Adewale Ademoyega did in Why We Struck: The Story of the First Nigerian Coup; that was what Fola Oyewole did in The Reluctant Rebel; that was what Achebe did in There was a Country; that was what innumerable other Nigerians who have been part of the making of the history of this nation and who have documented their accounts have tried to do; and this is what Obasanjo has also done.

 

Nor has he ever been found wanting in this regard. At intervals Obasanjo has been known to give an account of the roles he played at critical points in Nigeria’s history. To his credit are such personal historical accounts as My Command (1980), Nzeogwu (1987), and Not My Will (1990). Whether these books present the true accounts of the events as they happened or simply represent the veiled antics of a megalomaniac desperately struggling to exonerate himself is for historians to determine. The professional historian, when he eventually goes to work, will find these different accounts useful raw materials. Applying the tools of historiography, he is then able to study, analyse, synthesise, compare notes, filter, interpret, reinterpret and check these materials against other available sources in order, ultimately, to present what comes close to objective history.

Meanwhile, two weeks ago, taking a cue from Robert Skidelsky’s article “Philosopher kings versus philosopher presidents”, I highlighted the benefits that may accrue from the fact of a leader being a reader – and a writer as well. As if to accentuate that point, just few days ago I came upon a new book by Martin Udogie, How to Read More, in which he points to the reading habits of some world leaders – “from Rudi Giulani, who, as New York Mayor during 9-11, finally arrived home at past 2 a.m. on the night of that fateful day and still picked up a book to read, to Barack Obama, who went on a one-week vacation in 2010 with over 2,300 pages of reading, to George W. Bush, whose formula for reading was to enter into a reading contest with his top presidential aide, Karl Rove”.

While voracious reading does not necessarily translate to quality leadership, there is no gainsaying the fact that the leader who reads widely – especially in this knowledge-based economy – will be better placed than the leader who does not. When a leader reads, he assimilates knowledge and wisdom so that when he speaks, he also speaks from the position of knowledge, not ignorance. Then we will eliminate the possibility of having a sitting president allegedly saying on national television that he believes the price of cement in the country will go down “because Dangote said so”, or a presidential candidate saying he would stabilise the price of crude oil in the international market if elected president – when even OPEC has lost market power, with only 30 percent contribution to global oil supply.

And so, any leader who wants to lead well must as a matter of necessity avail himself of the knowledge stored up in books – for how will a leader sidestep his predecessors’ pitfalls if he hadn’t even read about them? How will he avoid repeating the mistakes of history if he doesn’t even know history?

In the heat of the debate generated by There was a Country, Adebayo Kareem, a respected lawyer, wrote an article where he urged Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s wartime military head of state, to write his own memoir in order to present his own personal account of the Nigeria/Biafra Civil War and “put the accounts straight”. And why not? There are too many issues around that war that need explaining. We need to know, for instance, why Gowon would go to Aburi-Ghana and reach certain agreements only to return to Nigeria and sing a different song. And there may be a lot to learn from his 3Rs post-war policy.

In concluding his review of My Watch presented at the launch on December 09, Patrick O. Okigbo III, principal partner at Nextier, wrote: “In all, and most importantly, we must be thankful to President Olusegun Obasanjo for the discipline and commitment it took to put this history on paper. At least, we now have one side of the story. And that side is vicious enough that it should prompt a response from many quarters.”

 

My Watch is as voluminous as they come, at 1,572 pages, a nightmare for a set of people not given to plenty reading. Yet, we expect all those that the former president has accused of wrongdoing – Atiku Abubakar, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Tony Anenih, Nasir El-Rufai, Muhammadu Buhari and the host of them – to not only sit down and do a cover-to-cover reading of the book, but also render their own accounts. Metro 97.7 FM Lagos, Radio Nigeria's first star channel, has a Sunday-Sunday programme it calls “Talk your own”. In my view, Obasanjo has talked his own; let those who feel aggrieved talk their own as well. As Okigbo finely puts it in the review, “This anticipated exchange will help Nigerians connect the dots, see the true picture of what has transpired, and learn whatever lessons there may be from these earlier mistakes.” For El-Rufai, perhaps it is time to write Accidental Public Servant II. Over to you!