The exact statement by General Obasanjo is as follows: “I am not a manoeuverer, I am not a manipulator. I am a democrat.” General Obasanjo must be thinking that the world is as dumb as he is. Misappropriating the meaning of a democrat to disguise his actions and policies in Nigeria must be meant to buy the influence and approval of his real masters. General Obasanjo must be in the opinion that he can deceive the entire world the way he deceives his own people in Nigeria. General Obasanjo, you are not a democrat, but an autocrat, simply because your words, actions, and policies at home are inconsistent with the ideals of democracy. Explain to your hosts how your utterances in Nigeria fall within the parameters of democracy. Or explain to them how your actions in public matters fall within the realm of democracy.

General Obasanjo, I seriously doubt if you really know the definition of a democrat. If your hosts in the media outlets had requested for a definition of a democrat, I am 100% certain that you would have struggled with the definition as you struggled with the definition of genocide in connection to Sudan. Your distorted ideas and concepts have led to thousands of unnecessary deaths in Nigeria exactly the same way your truncated understanding of genocide has led to thousands of deaths in Sudan. Since this essay is not about Sudan, let’s concentrate on Nigeria.

Recall your words to the families who lost their loved ones in Lagos military explosion. Even though the families were in distress, you were callous to their pains. Recall your reference to Adedibu as a force to reckon with in Oyo politics. Although the man was involved in the deaths of three innocent Nigerians in Ibadan, you refused to demand accountability for the lost lives. Remember your words when Anambara crisis began. You referred to the illegality as a crisis in morality. Each of these crises called for a democratic empathy, but you chose to show autocratic wickedness. Each crisis was manufactured by lawless thugs, but you showed your calculated coldness to the dead simply because the illegal activities were designed and implemented by your lawless agents. Your agents responsible for these crimes are yet to be prosecuted because of your intransigent and autocratic manipulations. Your words in connection to their illegal activities were careful distortions meant to subvert the ideals of democracy for Nigerians. But you are telling your hosts that you are neither a manipulator nor an autocrat. Why lie? Why deceive your masters? Why not tell them the truth about your true nature? Did you lie to them too about your actions in connection to your ferocious third-term activities in Nigeria?

No true democrat has ever openly condoned or praised the rubbishing of the rule of law in his nation. A true democrat does not withhold national security information from his citizens while at the same time sharing the information with foreigners. A true democrat, in the same strategic era as you are and with the same strategic opportunity as you have, would have used the historical opportunity to define the strategic direction of his nation via the use of legal institutions. A true democrat would have considered the actions of Uba and Adedibu as serious threats to democracy; he would have swiftly used the established courts to deal with such blatant disregard for an orderly social arrangement.

Instead, you freely and conscientiously chose to become enmeshed in destructive utterances that helped to inflam the situations. And by doing so, you had hoped to position yourself for the illegal services obtainable from the repugnant characters involved. By allowing your ego to overshadow your reason, you became caught up in self-serving ideas and manipulations, mutually harmful to you and to all Nigerians under your care.

Your distorted conceptions about democracy are also consistent with your actions in and out of Nigeria. No democrat takes a refuge in rubbishing the rule of law in his nation because democracy can not exist in his nation without the rule of law. Your refusal to obey the rulings of the Supreme Court of Nigeria is undemocratic and manipulative. Your involvement in the current attempt to rubbish the constitution of Nigeria by Mantu’s committee is undemocratic and manipulative. In both verifiable instances, your motivation was not the interests of the nation, but simply to service your narrow personal interests at the expense of the wider national interests. Your actions and inactions in and out of Nigeria have immensely contributed to the destruction of democratic ideals for Nigeria.

You cannot deny the above charges by shifting blames to Mantu or by blaming the members of the court because you are responsible for providing the strategic direction of the nation. Your strategic direction for Nigeria has been slouching towards one man’s autocratic rule in which your thugs control the strategic political events at your own personal service. This was why you reinstalled Chris Uba in a strategic position in PDP to continue his illegal activities against the will of the people of Nigeria. Similarly, you praised Adedibu to high heavens because doing so will enlist his illegal activities in your next fraudulent election schemes. But no true democrat employs such criminals as agents of political change.

Also, no democrat arbitrarily enacts policies to benefit his friends and family members at the expense of the majority of his people. You single-handedly liquidated the Nigerian Airways and employed your in-laws from Britain in your Virgin Atlantic policy. This policy obviously harms the interests of Nigerians and benefits your in-laws in Britain.

Further, you claim to be a productive farmer, with your farm reportedly earning $25,000 per month. Yet, Nigerians are starving to death due to lack of affordable food items. A true democrat would have used his productive farming techniques and experiences to feed his own citizens because no hungry man can reasonably engage in productive thoughts.

Your self-induced crises in Oyo and Anambara state, your airline policy, and your agricultural activities show an autocrat who makes all policy decisions that harm the interests of Nigerians. Yet, you want the world to believe that you are a democrat. You employ criminal thugs to extract obedience from your masses by force, intimidation, and murder. Yet, you inform the outside world that you are a democrat.

General Obasanjo, you may be a democrat to your masters, but you are not a democrat in your own home. A dignified democrat does not seek conformity and approval from outside his boundaries for policies within his home. A self-respecting democrat does not seek consensus from foreigners to enslave his own citizens.

A true democrat tries to gain consensus by listening to all sides in his native land under his own laws. A true democrat listens to his home opponents, to his home enemies, to his home citizens, to his home legislators, to his home judiciary, to his home courts, to his native laws and public opinion. A patriotic democrat does not consider honest disagreements in his home land as disloyalty to democratic processes.

To a tyrant, every productive opposition is a threat to the throne that must be fought by digging deeper and deeper into a detached enclave of lawlessness. But a patriotic democrat seeks answers from all sides at home before selling his soul to foreign lands for foreign crumbs. A patriotic democrat will never go out of his way to seek the wrong answers from imperialistic corners of the globe to justify predetermined decisions intended to achieve predetermined personal ambitions, especially when the predetermined decisions would plunge his nation into a deadly civil war.