Storm rider

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is no stranger to controversy. He exudes the vibes: sometimes frontally like an army of occupation exudes aggression, at other times latently like a decaying organism exudes putrid smell. Either way, you can’t miss the vibes or keep out of its stormy orbit. You get pulled in willy-nilly by the sheer bravado of the old man’s postulations. And he seems to relish all the fuss. With his characteristic imperial temerity, you can’t help recalling that his daughter and ex-Senator of the Federal Republic, Iyabo Obasanjo, once accused him openly of behaving like he is God and owner of Nigeria.

‘Baba Obasanjo,’ as he should be rightly addressed at 86 years of age, rides controversy like a storm. Sixteen years on after he left office as two-term president of the current political republic, besides a three-year stint in the late 70s as military head of state, Obasanjo carries himself as Lord of the Manor. He dictates rules of conduct for everybody based on his personal value standards, with any deviation incurring his harsh censure. It was such self-assigned pontifical oversighting that estranged him from his successors – former Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari – who he badgered with acerbic public letters criticising their performance in office. Mind you, this was against the familiar convention of a predecessor having unfettered access to his incumbent successor to offer counsel in privacy. Those successors, of course, didn’t welcome his irritable pretention to superior wisdom and responded much of the time with equally acerbic ripostes.  As for the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration presently in office, it is ‘morning yet on creation day’ (apologies to the late Chinua Achebe) for the ex-president. Still, he has been darkly expounding doomsday projections that only betrayed his prejudice since he is not exactly dispassionate. He openly canvassed a preferred candidate who lost the last presidential election and is, thus, a loser who cannot now disguise bitterness of electoral loss  as patriotic commentary on the state of the nation.

But the octogenarian is by no means deterred. He obviously enjoys the ruckus he creates and craves being prominent in national consciousness. Some people argued it might be because he hadn’t written a contentious public letter in a long while that he seized the moment penultimate weekend to foist another controversy on the national psyche. At Iseyin, Oyo State, the ex-president ordered traditional rulers gathered at a state function to get up on their feet, and then to sit down like school children. This was at the commissioning of the 34.85km Oyo-Iseyin Road and the completed Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Iseyin Campus housing the College of Agricultural Sciences and Renewable Natural Resources, at which Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde made Obasanjo special guest.

Visuals of the occasion showed the former president lecturing the assemblage of traditional rulers on the need to respect Yoruba culture and give honour to whom honour is due. Speaking in Yoruba, Obasanjo chided the royals that notwithstanding their office – which in tradition entails cultural and spiritual primacy – they ought to accord respect and honour to age and secular position of authority in line with ethos of ‘Omoluabi’ (Yoruba terminology for cultural decency and propriety). He said in a gruffy voice typical of an angry parade commander: “I greet kings and chiefs here seated. I am grateful you are here. But let me say this: wherever the president or governor is, kings present must stand up to honour him.” At this juncture, he barked at the traditional rulers to “stand up!” which they did in all their royal accoutrement, and then to “sit down!” which they also did. Obasanjo continued: “In Yoruba land, there are two things that are most respected among others: age and position. When a governor is still in power, he’s more powerful than any king. Even when I was President, I prostrated for kings outside, and when we went inside, kings would prostrate for me. So, let’s always celebrate our culture!”

“Obasanjo’s act in Iseyin reinforced the lore about the uncertainty of his Yoruba ancestry.” 

There’s a short visual clip of that function from which many have drawn the conclusion that the ex-president was demanding respect from the traditional rulers primarily for himself and secondarily for Governor Makinde. But that was only partly the case if you saw a longer clip of proceedings at the event. Protocol rules typically provide that lesser officials in secular ranking get to an event venue and take their seat before the arrival of higher placed officials. And so, the royals were already seated at the project commissioning venue in Iseyin before the arrival of Mr. Governor. Upon Makinde’s entry to the venue, however, the traditional rulers, apparently in assumption of their royal primacy, failed to rise to their feet in his honour That was the occasion Obasanjo seized upon to berate them. Note: protocol rules required that ‘lesser mortals’ already seated before the arrival of a ‘higher mortal’ rise in honour of the latter upon his/her entry. Only that at the Iseyin event, there was a latent conflict between secular primacy and cultural primacy resulting in the seeming act of disrespect to the governor by the traditional rulers.

Truth, though, is that this latent conflict might have gone unhighlighted nor indeed taken cognizance of by parties concerned had Obasanjo not constituted himself into a lightning rod on the royals. If you asked me, both the governor and traditional rulers harboured an indifference – uneasy though, it might be – to the protocol rule. It is a valid question, therefore, whether the ex-president secured Makinde’s buy-in before unleashing his spleen on the traditional rulers; and even if he did, whether the delivery was to the governor’s preferred specifications. In other words, there is a big chance Makinde was left blue-faced with embarrassment by Obasanjo’s rain on his parade – after all, it was his projects being commissioned and his due to have all the attention. In typical Obasanjo fashion of attention-jack, however, the governor and his Iseyin projects were thrust in the shadows and all that got noticed was the ex-president’s willful denigration of the Yoruba traditional stool. And not that he left the incident as happenstance. He has returned in national discourse after the Iseyin event to double down in the face of public outrage over his conduct that was widely viewed as sacrilegious; even when a self-acclaimed wife came up to offer public apology on behalf of the Obasanjo family, he disclaimed that apology and dismissed the woman as challenged in mental health.

Obasanjo’s act in Iseyin reinforced the lore about the uncertainty of his Yoruba ancestry. In Yoruba cultural consciousness, traditional rulers are semi-deities, which is to say they are spiritual essences in material packaging, and with inherent primacy over all mortals of whatever secular status. It was in that consciousness apparently that late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, with all his secular preeminence and historical cult following, rose to his feet at a public function in honour of the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, as can be seen in an old clip that was dug up and made viral by netizens in the wake of the Iseyin debacle. 

To be clear, no true Yoruba-born of whatever secular status would contest primacy in the open with traditional rulers, even if those same royals would in privacy submit to their preeminence on account of either age, lineage or office. Funny that Obasanjo himself made this very point verbally at the Iseyin event, but self-contradicted by his action. He said when he was president, he prostrated to kings outside but when he went inside – that is to say, in privacy – kings prostrated to him.  But then, what he ordered traditional rulers to do in Iseyin was to ‘prostrate’ outside to him and Governor Makinde, not the other way round. Another self-contradiction was on account of age, which the ex-president said had primacy in Yoruba culture. Obasanjo being in his 80s was on point in demanding obeisance to himself from the traditional rulers, many of whom he surpasses in age. It is indeed likely the royals obliged his culturally impunitous order out of respect for age. But not so for the Oyo governor for whom he as well demanded public obeisance. Governor Makinde is one gifted and favoured young man to whom many of the traditional rulers gathered at Iseyin are of sheer fatherly age. The ex-president’s statement about primacy of age was thus non-sequitur in light of what he demanded of the traditional rulers for Mr. Governor. Actually, Makinde must have cringed inwardly at Obasanjo’s demand from the royals on his account if he himself sets any store by his cultural heritage.

Still, Yoruba culture has abiding respect for age and accommodation of geriatric whimsies. And so, we must allow Baba Obasanjo to ride out this storm and others he may yet kindle in his days at ‘the departure lounge.’