RE – OBASANJO`S “NIGERIA WILL WITNESS A REVOLUTION SOON”

By Akolawole Shoremi

THANK YOU GENERAL OLUSEGUN OBASANJO, WE WILL REVOLT VERY SOON!

“This country with its institutions, belong to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their ‘constitutional right’ of amending it or their ‘revolutionary right’ to dismember and overthrow it.”
- Sir Abraham Lincoln

I was busy studying ‘Cracking The Millionaire Code’ by Mark Hansen and Robert Allen when I opt to relief myself with news on the social media. Right here on OgunVoiceNews, I stumbled on the news of a revolutionary warning issued by a famous General. How so interesting that the songs of revolution have long become familiarize with my mettlesome lips, therefore setting blaze my adrenalin to unveil and confirm the possibility of a revolution by the man who knows about Nigeria than I do.

An anoynmous said, “we can dodge our responsibilities but we can never dodge the consequence of dodging our responsibilities.” As a nation, we’ve failed. We’ve failed not because we didnt understand where we are coming from or where we are moving to, we’ve failed because we chose to priotize greed above selfless service, party-wishes above patriotism, ethnic and religious bigotism above discipline and true morals.

The primary responsibility of any government whatsoever is to priotize the welfare of her people in every decision making. Unfortunately, what we have in this part of the world is a government that satisfies herself before the people it was meant to serve. A government with a President that chose to wear gold shoes because he is from a wretched background that cant afford him a pair of shoe as a kid. A presidency that eats with both hands and two legs amounting to billions of naira while the masses stinks in poverty. But both the Electors and the Elected are responsible for who we are as a nation- we’ve both failed to carryout our part of responsibilities diligently and patriotically too. And indeed we can only fail to bear our burdens as expected or good for us, we can never fail to bear the consequence of our irresponsible and insensitive acts.

The present economic challenge of Nigeria seems to be much related to the events of the Revolutionary America across the 18th century to the 19th century, a notable one of which is on November 21, 1864, when Sir Abraham Lincoln wrote in a letter to Col. Williams F. Elkins as below,

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for the safety of my country, corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endaevor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed.”

The reality of the extract above was what dawned on my mind when I came across our own General Olusegun Obasanjo’s fear as contained in his words,

“I’m afraid, and you know I am a General. When a General says he is afraid, that means the danger ahead is real and potent…”

Making comparison, it might be right to view Obasanjo to Nigeria as what Lincoln was to America as at then. And it may be right too to assert that, as many believed Nigeria can never match the United States in every standard, as not witnessing what the US have witnessed, then we can assume that maybe Nigeria as a nation is also about to be transformed into a new, better & world’s super-nation. Just that our quest for revolution I feared may be battered by the same factors that corruption have used to impoverish us.

In my unpublished work- THE FAILED BRITISH EXPERIMENT: IN THE SHACKLES OF CORRUPTION, WHO WILL BAIL NIGERIA?- I stated so many reasons to why the country may never survive a revolution and still remain as one owing to our foundation, and the secret notions of our founding fathers that never wanted the almagamation of the Northern and Southern Nigeria. Also, as recalled by Karl Maier in his book ‘THIS HOUSE HAS FALLEN’, Obasanjo in his ’99 Presidential address had seen corruption as having reached the proportion of full blown cancer saying, “… there will be no sacred cows. Nobody, no matter who and where, will be allowed to get away with the breached of the law or the perpetration of corruption and evil.”

Contrary to Obasanjo’s hopes, our Nigeria today have so many sacred cows; ranging from Ayo Fayose (Fmr. Gov. of Ekiti), Adenike Grange (Fmr. Minister of Health), Joshua Dariye (Fmr. Gov. of Plateau), Saminu Turaki (Fmr. Gov. of Jigawa), Femi Fani Kayode (Fmr. Minister of Aviation), Gbenga Daniel (Fmr. Gov. of Ogun) and many more. Dissappointedly, General Olusegun Obasanjo himself is the Chief Sacred Cow of the modern Nigeria. Having duped Nigerians of #65 Billion alleged kickbacks and extortions in form of donations to his Presidential Library, and another #3 Billion alleged MOFAS account as recounted by former VP, Atiku Abubakar, and ...