May God Bless You, President Obasanjo

President Olusegun Obasanjo’s enduring imprint in the Nigerian story again came to the fore this week in two different interventions.

In the first instance it emerged that the former Nigerian leader had intervened in the sorry case of Senator Ike Ekweremadu and his wife who were recently convicted along with a Nigerian doctor over their bid to effect an organ transplant for their sick daughter.

In the second case was Obasanjo’s caution on the drift in the nation as he lamented that ethnic and religious divisions in the country are at an unprecedented level. His appeal at a book launch on Thursday was that the next government should take it as a priority to heal the nation from the divisions he said were also festered by the sham elections.

President Obasanjo in making his intervention in the trial of Nigeria’s immediate past Deputy President of the Senate, Ekweremadu, started with what was for me a very interesting humorous introduction.

In the letter to the Chief Court Clerk in London, UK, the former three-time Nigerian leader introduced himself thus: “I am Olusegun Obasanjo, a soldier commissioned into the British Army.”

That was indeed my first take of Baba Iyabo brining fact and enchanting humour into a delicate diplomatic shuttle.

It is interesting that the former president waded in after the Nigerian government appeared to have gloried itself in taking Ekweremadu out of the political scenario after many desperate efforts to win him over to the ruling party.

That desperation was seen in the disparate efforts by different organs of government to prosecute him on several issues including forging the Senate Standing rules and of false declaration of assets. In all the criminal cases taken against him, Ekweremadu prevailed and at a great cost to government which hired seasoned lawyers to prosecute him.  

A respected Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN hired to prosecute one of the cases submitted to the court that the case ought not to have come to trial.

It was as such disingenuous of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC to have again resurrected settled issues of declaration of assets last year after Ekweremadu was in the custody of the UK authorities.

It is telling that the EFCC action in charging Ekweremadu to court again when it fully knew that he was in British custody may have also contributed to damaging him before the British courts.

Given the health issues involved, and the fact that Ekweremadu wrote the British Embassy in Nigeria to support the visa application of the potential organ donor, it is clear that the Nigerian senator meant no harm ab initio.

That should have been a reason for the Nigerian government to have intervened as it had in time past done both in the UK and in other countries on behalf of its citizens.

However, for whatever reason, the Muhammadu Buhari government chose to look the other way in the matter of Ekweremadu.

Some have argued that the government could not have done anything. Wrong.

One of Nigeria’s leading human rights activists, Mr Richard Akinola in a post on Facebook on the Obasanjo intervention in the Ekweremadu matter last Thursday, observed that a United States senator could not have faced the indignity our former DSP faced and Washington DC would remain mum.

The US government has been known to go the length to even bring back villains with US citizenship from abroad.

Akinola, a former News Editor of Vanguard newspaper observed how when Buhari was military head of state in 1984 how his government prosecuted two British engineers who facilitated the removal of a British aircraft from Nigeria.

In his post Akinola recounted how he delegated a reporter, Onochie Anibeze, now the editor of Saturday Vanguard, to stay on top of the story that was suffused with diplomatese.

The imprisonment of the two engineers caused the then powerful UK Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe to visit Nigeria and negotiate their release.

38 years later in the reverse feature, our own Geoffrey Onyeama as foreign minister and Buhari again in power have remained mum to the circumstances of a Nigerian convicted of a British crime instigated by the harrowing circumstances of their daughter.

It is a shame that our Geoffrey Onyeama and Buhari were unable to rehash the well-known doctrine of diplomatic reciprocity after Nigeria caved in to release two Britons in 1985.

Some have alluded to Ekweremadu’s rejection of the APC, and others have alluded to his Igbo ancestry for the failure of the Buhari government to make the necessary intervention.

The reference to Ekweremadu’s Igbo ancestry as reason for the failure of the Buhari government to intervene in his matter also dovetails to allusions as to the tempestuous ethnic drift in Nigeria today.

It is this precarious situation that warranted President Obasanjo’s second intervention this week. We thank God that we have Obasanjo who despite his personal frailties remains an abiding patriot with Nigeria irrespective of tribe or creed as his watchword.

May God bless President Obasanjo, guide him in his later years, forgive him where he erred and guide him into eternal peace with Him many years from now.

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