ll over the world ,former presidents, are held in high esteem. They are still bestowed with part ( not necessarily all ) of the honor attached to their former office. They are provided with security by the state. They are by virtue of their past service to the state , property of the state. They are jewels! Whenever they depart this world they are given a befitting state burial. However, the above scenario is only a normative case. Not all former presidents retail the honor or regard they had in office .Some of them suffer humiliating fate out of office. Some of them are forced on exile, becoming fugitives of the law. And for good reason. This has nothing to do with neglect by succeeding regimes or ungrateful country men. It is simply the case of � as you make your bed so shall you lie on it�. While former presidents of advanced democracies leave office ( at the expiration of their terms) with honor and dignity, in Africa and some of other Third World countries, rulers in large part , refuse to vacate office at the end of their terms. Some of them who in most cases do not come to office by popular democratic elections continue to manipulate the electoral process and hang on to power until they are forced out by popular uprisings or military coups. A good example here is Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and the continent's shame.

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Still on Nigeria, two perfect examples of past rulers who left office without honor are Generals Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida. Incidentally, these twosome have many things in common. They are both military officers who ascended to political power through military coups and rigged elections. Another similarity between them is that they were reluctant to vacate the seat of power at the expiration of their terms. Actually, one of them, Ibrahim Babangida, seemed to have believed that his tenure of office had no limit since he was not elected into office through an electoral process. He came in through a military palace coup when he staged a counter coup to overthrow another military ruler on August 27, 1985. General Babangida in a well calculated plot to hang on to power floated a dubious � transition to civil rule program� which gulped over N40 billion. General Babangida continued to prolong his transition program by disqualifying and banning one set of contestants after the other. However, for Babangida and indeed the Nigerian nation, things came to a head when the results of the June 12, 1993 presidential election was ordered suspended by the gap-toothed General. That watershed election , adjudged to be the fairest and freest in the nation's history was eventually annulled. And the country was plunged into a political turmoil. The gal of popular protests which followed the criminal annulment of the people's mandate forced the so-called political Maradona to abandon his sit-tight plot and stepped aside.

General Ibrahim Babangida seems to cherish history. Sometimes he thinks he has a place in history. But he is also wary of the verdict of history, which is interesting. � The history of our nation is and will remain an area of lively debate both for us and for generations to come. I am grateful to Allah , that most of us who who have had the rare privilege of providing leadership to our nation at critical moments are still around to share in the divergent interpretations and sometimes, hasty verdicts about those chapters of our national history which we presided over� , he wrote.( Vanguard, October 18, 2007). However, the self proclaimed �evil genius� is a little disingenuous in suggesting that it is hasty to pass a verdict of history on his eight years reign of infamy . His was a harvest of atrocities against the Nigerian state-the elevation of corruption and treasury looting, the novel crime of assassination by parcel bomb of Dele Giwa, the execution of top ranking military officers , including the poet General, Mamman Vasta on phantom coup charge, the extermination of an entire generation of middle rank military officers in a suspicious plane crash, the ECOMOG misadventure,the abortion of democracy through the June 12, 1993 presidential election annulment. And the list goes on and on. All these condemned Ibrahim Babangida to the garbage heap of Nigerian history.

And what do one make of the recent mockery of the Nigeria Labour Congress by Babangida. In a speech he delivered on the occasion of the 2007 NLNG Awards in Literature and Science, Babangida remarked, albeit derisively, that unlike the NLC, the club of retired Generals has no avenue for engaging in collective bargaining and staging demonstrations to press home their demands. The Nigeria Labour Congress is a moribund labour union which routinely calls off a national strike action, in some cases, in as little as three days, without achieving anything; leaving one to wonder why they called out these strikes in the first place.

General Babangida no doubt, has his legacies. He would be remembered as the man who glorified corruption in Nigeria. He would be remembered as the one whom the late economic guru, Dr. Pius Okigbo found to have � misappropriated� some $12 billion oil money of the 1991 Gulf war windfall. And ask the living legend, Professor Wole Soyinka, and he would tell you that another legacy of General Ibrahim Babangida is the dispatching of General Mamman Vasta and co. to the great beyond on phantom coup charge. And there is also the issue of the the �mysterious� crash of the Hercules C-130 plane in 1992 in which a record 148 middle cadre military officers perished. There is also the issue of parcel-bombing of celebrity journalist and founding editor-in-chief of Newswatch magazine, Dele Giwa, on October 19, 1986. You would also recall the ECOMOG fiasco: how Babangida and Abacha used ECOMOG to pillage billions of dollars of our oil money, which The News magazine, April 29, 1996 ,put at an estimated $4 billion. . Not only that our oil money was wasted in the ECOMOG misadventure; precious Nigerian lives-those of our soldiers and journalists were needlessly expended. And as usual, our national shame was exported to Liberia and Sierra Leone, as Nigerian soldiers on �peace- keeping missions� reportedly engaged in large scale looting and raping of women in both countries.

Babangida gave us General Sani Abacha, the Stone Age despot. Tragically, the Babangida -Abacha political intrigue claimed the life of the president-elect, Bashuron M.K.O Abiola. While there is no argument about General Abacha's involvement in the assassination of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, the Amazon of the Nigerian democracy movement, we are still awaiting words from General Abdulsalami Abubakar concerning what he knows about her husband and our President-elect, Bashuron M.K.O. Abiola who died mysteriously on his lap after sipping a cup of tea.

I can emphatically posit with no apology to anyone, that General Olusegun Obasanjo is the most dishonorable and delusional hypocrite to have come out of the African continent. The former Nigerian president (absolutely regrettable to refer to this type of human being as a former president of a country I call my own ) was his usual self when he recently spoke in Geneva at a seminar for current Special and Personal Representatives and envoys of the UN Secretary-General. In that speech Obasanjo was quoted to have identified bad leadership as the cause of Africa's developmental challenges and insecurity. ( The Punch October17, 2007) Bad government? Was it a true confession or a monumental case of hypocrisy for a man whose eight years of stranglehold on the Nigerian state was even rated in some circles as being worse than that of the late General Abacha ? As if that was not revealing enough Obasanjo even went ahead to note that � the resources that should be deployed to socio-economic dimensions were consistently diverted into regime perpetuation or castigation of opposition parties. Yet, these were exactly what Obasanjo was doing. Recall how he spent millions of public money to bribe members of the National Assembly to support his Third Term project. In fact, Obasanjo seemed to have been scheming to be a life-president before a determined opposition in the National Assembly forced him out. How Obasanjo persecuted not just members of opposition parties but also members of his own party who happened to disagree with him, including his own vice president . He even mentioned human rights violations and lack of respect for international human rights conventions. Obasanjo is guilty of all what he noted as being responsible for developmental challenges in Africa.

Obasanjo was very brutal in looting the national treasury as much as he was on human rights violations. He was lawless, raw and crude. On the eve of his departure Obasanjo tried his worst to empty the national vault by awarding dubious last minute contracts. Mr. Jide Ayobolu in his piece OBASANJO'S LAST MINUTE SPREE ( Vanguard, May, 17, 2007) detailed Obasanjo's last minute looting as follows:N21.4 billion for capacity building in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, N2.3 billion for inclusive education for gifted and physically challenged children, N6.8 billion for the owiwi multi-purpose dam in his home state,N480 million to buy 60 peugeot cars for ( presidential inauguration?) and another N32 billion for Yar'Adua's inauguration.,N40 million to buy new uniforms for 150 police officers.

Obasanjo is a monumental embarrassment to every Nigerian, wherever he may be on the globe. He has gone down in history as the most irresponsible president Nigeria has ever produced. Obasanjo was a tyrannical dictator of the crudest kind. He trampled on the human rights of Nigerians, sometimes worse than what obtained during the military era, with reckless abandon. The Obasanjo dictatorship even gagged the otherwise vibrant Nigerian press. He banned radio and television stations in the country from taking news life from foreign stations. Obasanjo's assault on the Nigerian media got so barbaric that during National Assembly debate on his ill-fated Third Term project mayhem was unleashed on an independent local television station (Africa Independent Television, AIT) , for daring to provide live coverage of the debate for all Nigerians to see. Nigerian security descended on the television station in the nation's capital torturing news crew and staff before taken them into detention. The tapes containing the National Assembly debate on Third Term were confiscated. As if these were not enough acts of cruelty, the country home of the TV station' s proprietor and Director Chief Raymond Dokpesi was burnt down. The live coverage of the Third Term debate showing the overwhelming rejection by the lawmakers of Obasanjo's attempt to perpetuate himself in power was embarrassing to the tyrant and his cronies. Obasanjo had before the debates threatened the leadership of the National Assembly to ensure that the debate went his way. But both the Senate president and the Speaker of the House defied his intimidation and stood on the side of the Nigerian masses. Of course, they paid a political price for defying the dictator as they were denied the re-election bonanza which were given to all loyal party members of the National Assembly ( those who toed Obasanjo's line) by their party, controlled by Obasanjo.

Obasanjo went on to commit the worst election fraud in modern history and succeeded in handing over the reigns of power to a trusted stooge who would cover up his dirty tracks.

The looting of the national treasury was Obasanjo's family business. While Obasanjo was using fronts at home and abroad to siphon the Niger delta oil money , and allocating to himself , cronies and business associates, the countries public enterprises under a dubious privatization program, his wife and children were equally engaged in shady deals and money laundry . Obasanjo and his late wife were competing in globe-trotting and stashing our oil money in foreign bank accounts . The former Nigerian first lady and a retinue of aides would take up an entire floor of a New York City five star hotel, lavishing some $100,000 on a single trip on hotel bills alone; not to talk of shopping sprees. And she frequented such trips . Obasanjo's first son , Gbenga, who became �an international businessman� when his father became president managed to load his US bank accounts with $22 million dollars. This is on top of various shady contract deals in Nigeria. Obasanjo's other son straight from college , with no job to his credit , was able to own a $550,000 mansion in Brooklyn ,New York City.

Again, I am maintaining that Olusegun Obasanjo may end up being the biggest thief, surpassing Babangida and Abacha's records, Nigeria has produced. He has presided over a bumper harvest of the country's oil revenue and he helped himself to it like no other person has done. Political gadfly, Chief Godwin Daboh Adazua puts former president Obasanjo's net worth at an estimated N180 billion.

The prominent place occupied in the Nigerian society today by such despicable characters like Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida shows the depth of lunacy pervading the landscape. Yes, they ruled the country at various times and as former presidents they should have a place reserved for them in society. They should be regarded as statesmen, supposedly. However, the truth is that these characters missed by choice, the opportunity to occupy a place of honor in a decent society .They did not only rule the country they ruined it. It breaches the law of natural justice that those who brought the country to its knees and reduced its citizens to destitute, continue to be treated to red carpet reception. These are men who robbed us of our national wealth and stripped us of our dignity of the human person. Again, natural justice dictates that they are made to reap what they sowed while in power. They should reap humiliation not adulation .

In any decent society, Obasanjo and Babangida should be languishing in prison today, for their multiple crimes against humanity-including , election fraud,economic crimes and murders. Obasanjo and Babangida belong to the club of the Mobutu Sesesekos, Idi Amin, Dadas, Hasting Kamuzu Bandas, Robert Mugabes. They are those the executed Environmental and Minority Rights campaigner Ken Saro Wiwa identified as being responsible for the African nightmare.

I have argued for the umpteenth time that for President Yar' Adua to be taken seriously about righting the wrongs of the Obasanjo regime, he must be seen to be tackling the issues of treasury-looting involving Obasanjo himself and the many unresolved obvious politically motivated murders that took place on his watch. Any day that passes , leaving Olusegun Obasanjo , Ibrahim Babangida and their conspirators as free men on our streets, is like an additional nail driven into the coffin of justice in that country. And President Umaru Yar'Adua is already guilty of culpable negligence and complicity concerning the issue of bringing these evil men to justice.