Obasanjo: A psychoanalysis

By Reuben Abati  (EMAIL) Thursday, June 14, 2001

ome explanation about the slightly pompous title of this article is required. In January 1988, I had registered for a doctorate programme at the University of Ibadan. My initial topic of research was 'A Psycho-analytic Reading of Wole Soyinka's Heroes.' To prepare the mandatory proposal, I had to read up just about any available material on psychoanalysis and its connection with and application to literature. But the more I built up the literature review, the more intimidating psychoanalysis appeared, and gradually, I began to feel that I was moving away from literature into the metaphysical. Afraid that I could end up sounding like one of those mad characters in psychoanalysis, I suspended that particular line of research and opted for something more down-to-earth, but no less ambitious. Still, I managed to escape with some elementary understanding of psychoanalysis, the substance of which I consider to be that there is something in the inner consciousness, a persona beneath the surface, which propels human beings, determines their action or inaction, and through a probing of that causative inner reality, we are likely to move closer to the real person behind the over-sociologised character that is engaged in multiple role-playing on the stage of social acceptance. I assume this principle to be true and believable: that human beings are not necessarily what they appear to be. They are engaged in an unseen, but determinable struggle with a series of selves and others in the rather benumbing hall of mirrors within the human person. Having defined the scope of my interest in the subject this simply, I propose to argue that if there is any character in Nigeria at the moment, requiring urgent psychoanalysis, it is President Olusegun Obasanjo. His is the name on everyone's lips. Many of the persons who voted for him, who still consider him the best possible choice for the office are not so sure whether they understand him anymore. It is not enough to say that the man is enigmatic; rather in his relationship with the public he unwittingly compels his audience to wonder and exclaim. Why for example, does he behave the way he does? Why does he seem to consider himself more intelligent than every other Nigerian alive? Why is he not listening to us? Does it not occur to him that he is no longer as popular as he was two years ago? Does he even care about what the people are saying? The only way to answer one or all of these questions is to attempt to deconstruct the Obasanjo persona, to remove that is, the mask on his face, and by so doing confront him with the conflict between his id and ego or the Appollonian-Dionysian strain in his personality. One major source of concern is the peripatetic nature of his Presidency. The truth, bitter as it may be, is that Obasanjo is the most travelled President in the world today. In 1979, the inimitable Awo had promised that if he were elected Nigeria's President, he would not travel anywhere for complete three years. His excuse then was that the problems confronting the country were so enormous that it would require the President to sit down firmly and tackle the problems one after the other. That was in 1979, 22 years ago. Since then, the problems that Awo spoke about have refused to go away. They have worsened, throwing up thereby the deep contradictions in the Nigerian state. And yet, in the face of this, we have a President who seems to feel more at home inside an aircraft. Rather than sit and do the job, President Obasanjo in the last two years, has practically handed over power to Vice-President Atiku, who in my reckoning has no idea of what the job is all about. I imagine, to start with, that President Obasanjo is suffering from the Mandela complex. By this, I mean that he sees himself as a father of the nation, a messianic figure whose main duty is to function as a symbol of the people's aspirations. The only problem is that Nigerians are not looking for a symbol; they want a mechanic in power who would put the car of the country back on the road. Ironically, President Obasanjo studied Engineering but like every local boy who made good in the big theatre, he seems to have forgotten that background. I imagine, also, that President Obasanjo considers the office of President somewhat beneath him. That is why instead of using the position to solve Nigeria's domestic problems, he is using it to position himself as an international figure. His real ambition in that regard, is to be with the big boys on the international scene. He is more interested in international causes rather than national causes. Maybe no one should blame him. There is a sense in which Obasanjo has proved all the points that is necessary in the Nigerian space. He is afterall, the Nigerian soldier who rounded up the civil war and secured victory for the Federal troops. As a young child in Abeokuta, he pounded the streets barefooted; he in fact, opted for a military career because that was the only way he could earn some money, get free meals and still build a career, and yet when he returned to his home town later, he was received as a hero � the local boy had made good. In Nigeria today, he remains the first military ruler to hand over power to civilians. So even in that regard, when he looks around, there is no one like him. He is better than Ibrahim Babangida and every other person. He is special. He is chosen. He is favoured. It can be a terrible thing to be such a unique creature. In addition, Obasanjo is the only man to have gone to prison and return as President � for a record second time. That is something Chief Obafemi Awolowo could not achieve. The man is an engineer and a bloody soldier but again, he is the only one of his type who has written so many books not just on Nigeria, but also on religion, the human condition and development processes. He may not be happily married in the original sense of that phrase but in the business of bedroom warfare, the man has shown that he is a prize-winning sharpshooter. His children are brilliant and exceptional, and at least five of them have Ph.Ds to show for their father's special genetic make-up. May I end this line of voyeuristic appraisal then, by saying that a man with all these can understandably assume, that the next challenge is for him to capture the global space. Like Mandela. So he travels all the time. He is an internationalist at heart. Whenever he sits down in Nigeria, it is to consult with international friends and consultants. At the moment, Abuja is the workshop capital of the world. Every international group or person is trooping to Abuja to organise a workshop on just about any subject. The CIA is all over the place, also, snooping around. The World Bank. The IMF. Andrew Young, the President's African-American friend, is a big Abuja contractor! He handles the government's image in the international market. Small boys and girls from Europe and America, who are not one-quarter as educated as this writer for example(!) are busy hanging around. They are the President's friends. In a way, the President thinks his own compatriots are fools, and his advisers are persons who are just looking for something to eat. They talk about National Conference, power supply, marginalisation, food scarcity � so he checks his special international dictionary, and he finds that these phrases are not there. In frustration, he leaves it all to Atiku Abubakar to sort out, and incidentally, Atiku, too, is more interested in other things: like spending seven hours at a yeye PDP meeting! It is perhaps nice to have a President like this who can open any door anywhere in the world, and who is on a first name terms with every important human being on the surface of the earth. It is good for him because it is a unique personal achievement � the best Nigerian alive. But it is not good for the average Nigerian because it has not changed anything about the way our President's international friends look at us. They treat us with pity. They think we are all animals who are just lucky to have one of their own as President. But the truth is, the ordinary Nigerian wants His Excellency President Obasanjo, to carry him along too� to lift him up so that he too can raise his head as a member of the international community of human beings. I want to end this chapter of the article by saying that it remains curious that the President chose to travel to Indonesia on the occasion of Nigeria's second anniversary of democratic rule. There was trouble, next door, while he was in that country. If something had happened to him or members of his delegation on that trip, I bet that many Nigerians would have been thoroughly pleased. One other psychoanalytic index of the Obasanjo persona is the desperation with which he has been trying to force himself into the Yoruba political mainstream. It is on record that that mainstream considers him an outsider. The Awoists do not like him because his accomplishments remind them of the failure of their icon. Abiola's followers, or better still, the June Twelvers consider him the beneficiary of their collective struggle which he in fact, opposed, and has refused to recognise. Obasanjo's strategy of conciliation has been to look for the children of all possible antagonists and offer them appointments either as Special Advisers or as members of boards or as ambassadors or as members of the Federal Cabinet. The ones who are not yet in his cabinet are invited to join him on several of his foreign trips. His assumption: that the parents of these children of opportunism would be so impressed that they would defend Obasanjo's interests in the Yoruba space. It is a psychological assumption. Somewhere in Obasanjo's consciousness, he must have realised that whatever it is he may have achieved inside Nigeria and internationally, the truest and most enduring location of his legacy can only be among his own people. Which is somehow true. Awo is practically worshipped. He is dead but he continues to rule Yorubaland from the grave. M.K.O. Abiola did not become President but he has since been adopted as an eternal icon of Yoruba struggle in Nigerian politics. In the last 50 years, Olusegun Obasanjo has been the most successful Yorubaman in Nigerian politics and history, and yet his own people treat him as an outsider. In the last election, they didn't even vote for him. For a man with his kind of ego, that would be an abiding source of worry. He cannot live with that kind of irony. So he thinks by winning the most articulate Yoruba politician to his side (Bola Ige, that is) and by empowering their children, he would construct a personal road into the Yoruba heartland? I believe he is mistaken. I insist, again, that Yoruba politics does not obey that kind of logic. The very constituency that Obasanjo is cultivating in Yorubaland would deny him the passage he seeks simply because he poses a threat to the personal ambition of individual and established members of that power elite. When he offers their children appointments, they think they deserve such recognition. That is the only reason why Papa Adesanya would promise to curse his daughter for accepting an appointment in Obasanjo's government, and he would subsequently refuse to do so. Now, of course, no man would do that kind of thing. And has Obasanjo not noticed that these persons are more interested in their own biological children? Even if they are failed operators of business centres, neighbourhood hooligans, unemployed influence peddlers, persons who have failed in family life and in society, over-pampered kids who have never known what it means to struggle and live? Obasanjo rests his future on their shoulders, but these are the same persons who would deny his own children the space that their father legitimately earned. Awolowo was surrounded by these same children, but he invested in a different constituency. My conclusion in this preliminary comment, is that Obasanjo's re-evaluation of his role in Yoruba politics, is driven more by fear rather than a sober understanding of the nature of Yoruba politics and politicians. But then, all psychoanalytic subjects are animals of fear.... I wish him well.