July 3, 1999
INTERVIEW WITH NIGERIA’S PRESIDENT OLUSEGUN OBASANJO
Victor Oladokun, host of the international TV magazine program, TURNING POINT, was recently granted the first one-on-one interview with Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo. The following are excerpts from the interview in Abuja. President Obasanjo (click to view his thumbnail picture and larger picture) spoke about corruption, debt reduction, and time spent in prison, forgiveness and his faith in God.
Victor: As President, what do you perceive to be some of the major challenges you may face during your first 100 days in office? Also, what are some of the short and long-term challenges you anticipate?
Obasanjo: Interesting, I think one of the challenges is how to moderate the expectations of
Nigerians without dampening those expectations. Making them realize that we want to perform and we will perform, but we are not miracle workers or magicians. We need all hands on deck. There is virtually nothing that we can leave out. Is it the shortage of fuel, the non-performance of the energy sector, the erratic telecommunication service, the maintenance of our highways, unemployment or the insecurity of life and property? You can see that they are all inter-related. Unemployment feeds on the downturn in the economy. The down turn in the economy feeds on the lack of both local and foreign investment. So, all that has to be dealt with.
Victor. Corruption has been the bane of Nigeria and not necessarily the lack of resources. You have spoken against corruption and made it a key platform of your electoral campaign. How important is the issue of corruption?
Obasanjo: Very, very important. It is in fact one of the key areas, because some of the things that we want to do cannot work unless we take the issue of corruption seriously. We cannot get as much inflow of foreign investment or even investment from Nigerians, unless we deal with the issue of corruption. I think the international community will not take us seriously in the areas of debt forgiveness, debt reduction and assistance, unless we take the issue of corruption very seriously. We will see what we can do. We will do lot of things. We will lead by example. We will make sure that we search, seek, and recover whatever people are trying to get away with. We will also educate people, because dealing with corruption must be a continuous process. It is not a thing you can do now and say, “Okay, we have dealt with it". If we do that, it will come back with a vengeance!
Victor: Do you feel that the power structures are ready for this kind of antidote? And what about those who feel it is going to be “business as usual”, that there will be no repercussions?
Obasanjo: They will see that it won’t be business as usual. Normally, human beings will try. However, once they realize it does not work, they will give in or give up!
Victor: Mr. President sir, the eyes of the world are on Nigeria. Why should the international community believe this is the last time the military will ever intervene in Nigerian politics?
Obasanjo:
I should also ask why should they? Well, I would say that the situation this time is different from the situation before. For the first time, every Nigerian military and civilian now knows that the world does not approve of military regimes. If they have heard it in the past, now they have seen it with world imposing sanctions on us during the last military regime.
Secondly, Nigerians themselves are tired and fed up with the military. This is the first time some Nigerians have died, had charges brought against them and put in prison. Not only that, we have never had a situation where you have a man coming in who is equally at home with the military and at home with civilians. He is a man who is not a novice. He has done it before, even though the dispensation was different. A leader is a leader. Political leadership is political leadership.
There are certain things, which of course would change in terms of the Constitution. Now, I don’t make law. I will have to go to the lawmakers. I have to lobby them. I have to explain things to them. I know my limitations, but I also know what can be done at the executive level. All these are indications that things are different this time, and the results are bound to be different!
Victor: It’s been 20 years since you left office. Are you staking your Presidency on what you achieved in the past or what you intend to achieve in the future?
Obasanjo: Both, they go together.
Victor: Since you have said both, what essentially will be different from what you intend to achieve as a civilian President, compared to what you achieved in 1979 as a military leader?
Obasanjo:
Well, as I said a moment ago, as a military Head of State in whom executive and legislative power resides, there is that ability to work expeditiously if you like. But as a political president in whom only executive power resides, and who must go to others to get bills passed, I have to develop a means by which I can get others to do things maybe nearly as fast as I would have wanted to do them myself. I cannot be as fast but nearly as fast.
When you asked whether it would be based on what I have done before or what I expect to be doing, I said both because part of what brought me into office is my track record. That track record is there. I have to live up to that track record and in fact, surpass it!
Obasanjo:
I will pursue it. Why is it not practical? The international community particularly the West have done us well. They wanted us to go for democracy. They brought sanctions to bear when we had a bad man at the helm of affairs in the country. Some of our citizens died for democracy. Some were incarcerated, and others were deprived in many other ways.
We struggled and God crowned our efforts with Success. Democracy is not an event, it is a process, and we have to continue with that process. To sustain democracy, it must be nourished. Nourishment politically and economically. Sooner or later, Nigerians will be asking for the democracy dividend. That is, an improvement in their quality of life. I must be able to give them that. I don’t think I can if Nigeria continues to bear the debt that is over hanging it right now.
I am not talking about the morality of this debt, let us put that aside. By that, I mean there is a case, where a turnkey carpet project was embarked on in one of the South Eastern states of Nigeria for $8 million. The loan was drawn to the last cent. The site for the project was not even cleared. That is one of the debts that you are now asking us to pay. I am not arguing about the morality of it, but what
I am saying is that if you genuinely want us to go democratic, and we have to, we are now saying," help us sustain democracy”. Not even saying write off everything. We are saying give us some form of remission. If you like, take off the interest. That is done in normal life. I am a farmer and when things went bad on my farm, I called the banks and we sat down and discussed it. The bank might say we cannot write off the capital, but we can give you a waiver on the interest. That is the sort of thing we are asking for.
Victor: Your reputation and profile in the West are pretty high. How do you intend to use your network of friends and relationships to better the lives of Nigerians as a whole?
Obasanjo:
I believe that God gives you everything you have for the purpose of serving humanity. The life, the contacts, the friends, the reputation and the position that God gives you, are all for a purpose. God has given me, I should say, a certain profile, contacts and reputation within certain communities and societies. At the same time God has given me a position in my country. Obviously, God wants me to match the two together for a purpose.
The situation in my country economically is still very bad. I had a meeting with the IMF this morning. What they had projected the economic situation to be at the end of May was much worse. I have to use whatever influence, reputation or contacts I have for the benefit of improving the lot of those for whom I have direct responsibility, for those Nigerians who are living here and those who have no where else to live except here.
Victor:It seems there is a new General Obasanjo, very different from the Obasanjo who ruled in 1979. Back then, unlike today, you did not speak publicly about your faith. Is this a new Obasanjo that we are seeing?
Obasanjo: I don’t know. People talk of a new and improved Obasanjo. I don’t know what they mean by that. I was a military man then, even though I was handling public affairs. As a military man, there was a limit to how much I could be exposed to the public. That’s just part of my military training. But now, the dispensation is different. The first thing about my job (as a civilian President) is that I have to go out and ask people for their votes. I have to talk to them. I have to present myself to them. So, that makes a difference between Obasanjo as a military head of state and Obasanjo as a civilian political head of government. I think that you understand.
Victor: What would you say was your most difficult period in prison?
Obasanjo: I think that the most trying period was getting around to being able to forgive. Immediately the verdict was given, I felt shattered. It is a different thing if you have committed an offence and you know that you are being punished for it. But it’s a different thing, when you have done no wrong and to the best of your ability and knowledge you have lived your life as reasonably as possible in serving humanity. I went through all the sections of the Psalms, where it says, “do this to my enemies, do that to my enemies”. The second stage was “deal with my enemies as you deem fit. I will not tell you what to do, but deal with my enemies, as you deem fit”. The third stage was to forgive. And I did forgive.
Victor: When you heard about the death of the late Sani Abacha, you actually wrote a letter of condolence to his widow even though you were still in prison. Was that part of the process of forgiving?
Obasanjo: By that time I had completely forgiven what I call “the arch tormentors and subsidiary tormentors of my life. I had completely forgiven them. The Holy Book says “Mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice”. So, when I heard the news, I said, “the family of this man must be mourning”. I genuinely felt for her. When I mentioned it to my doctor that I intended to write her, he said you really do? I said, “ Yes I do!” But the man in charge of the prison said “no, I will mention it to the Controller of Prisons”. He went to the Controller, who later went to the Controller General. He ordered that the letter be dispatched to him for delivery.
Victor: What do you attribute your turning point or changing fortunes to?
Obasanjo:
I was sentenced to life imprisonment. I had two charges. One carried the death sentence, that is, treason. The second charge was concealment of treason, which carried life imprisonment. Somehow along the line they decided to go for the concealment of treason rather than treason. So, at the end of the day they found me guilty for concealment of treason and sentenced me to life imprisonment. He (Sani Abacha) then reduced it to 15 years.
When you ask what I owe my good fortune to, I would say to nobody except to God. I believe that God never allows anything to happen except He has a purpose for it to happen. And nothing happens which God does not allow to happen. So, I believe in my case, God allowed it to happen. It happened and God knows the end from the beginning. I believe He purposed it, He designed it, He knew it and if He didn’t design it, he allowed it to happen up to a point.
Satan can carry out things in your life if God allows him. But God also gives a limitation to how far Satan can go. So, very much like in the story of Job, He said, “here he is”. Satan talked about Job’s wealth and everything that the Lord had done for him and the hedge God had built around him. God said, “okay if that is what you think makes him so faithful, so loyal, so upright and so God fearing, I leave him to you and all the things he has. But first, don’t touch his life. That is the limit”. I believe I owe everything to God who allowed evil to get only to a point and put a limit to how far it could go.
©Turning Point 1999
Footnote: The thumbnail picture at top left corner shows the interviewer, Victor while one in the middle on the right is Major General Abdulsalam Abubakar, handing power to President Olusegun Obasanjo at the inauguration ceremony in Abuja on 29 May 1999.
