EX-PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo is probably the most ubiquitous former office holder in Nigeria today. He is constantly in the news, often for very controversial and sanctimonious reasons. To build and nurture his public persona, he covets and honours every invitation, whether book launch, seminar or even the smallest gathering where hosts and invited guests talk mundane shop. Nothing is too high or too low for him to attend. And no topic too arcane or simple. All he does is seize every occasion to sound off, lubricate his ego, tell everyone off, and try to leave Nigeria in no doubt who the special one is. And when seminars and book launches are not forthcoming in torrents, he sometimes contrives mild-mannered or, if occasions demand, acerbic letters to his foes; but if his foes are depleted on account of age and death, or have become indifferent to his rage, then to his long-suffering friends.

At 80 years, he has boundless energy, seemingly ready to go on and on, privately and publicly mummifying under the glare of national publicity. A few days ago, in a letter he wrote to Olisa Agbakoba, the former Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) president who needlessly asked him to help facilitate a generational shift in leadership, Chief Obasanjo ladled out boiling oil on young aspiring leaders. Said he to Mr Agbakoba: “You should know that some of these young people, whose interest we canvass, have, in the recent past, been a complete disappointment and failure in their various appointed or elected positions…Some of these young people, in public and private sectors, have frittered (away) the prospect of being at the vanguard of sustainable development of what some of us, the earlier generation of leaders, pioneered, on the altar of their crass materialism, self-centredness and opportunism.” Sadly, the former president was self-righteous but right.

And turning to the National Assembly, the object of his lasting animosity after that institution dealt his third term hopes a mortal blow, Chief Obasanjo, indulging his expansive wit at a book launch in Ibadan, scowled: “But an Agreement is an agreement (on ASUU) whoever the agent is that signed that agreement on your behalf, you are bound by it. You may now have to renegotiate to have a new agreement but the agreement earlier signed remains an agreement. When the university teachers go on strike, there is an agreement; and when doctors go on strike, there will be a special agreement. And when the universities teachers see that the agreement reached with the doctors is different from theirs, they go on strike and this is bad for our economy… Ninety per cent of revenue is used to pay overheads, allowances, salaries and not much is left for capital development…It is even worse for the National Assembly. They will abuse me again, but I will never stop talking about them. They are a bunch of unarmed robbers. They are one of the highest paid in the world where we have 75 per cent of our people living in abject poverty. They will abuse me tomorrow and if they don’t, maybe they are sleeping.”

As accurate as Chief Obasanjo’s observations are, he always fails to admit that in nearly all the crises plaguing Nigeria, he is complicit. He should ask himself, as he continues to play god, why all the men he backed to the presidency turned out woefully. That will be a good starting point.