Obasanjo was not sworn in merely to "mean well" for Nigeria
By OBI NWAKANMA
Special to USAfricaonline.com
USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
NigeriaCentral.com
The
Black Business Journal
As the Nigerian parliament begins this mid-August 2002, its investigation of Nigeria's president retired Gen. Obasanjo (Obasanjo faces corruption and ineptitude impeachment charges. Parliament gives retired Gen. Obasanjo 2 weeks to resign or face Impeachment for corruption,"monumental inadequacies, ineptitude, persistent disrespect for the rule of law...." Embattled Senate Prez Anyim says Obasanjo should not get 2nd term) one of the sundry supporters of the president used one of their usual phrases to shift the discuss away from specifics "I believe the president has meant well for Nigeria..."
And, my response? Obasanjo was not sworn in to 
"mean
well" for Nigeria. This exhausted cliche for incompetence does not
take into consideration the specific accusations leveled against the
president. You do not see the implication of the executive orders
that flout the so-called constitutions of the federal republic? That
the president has not executed the appropriation bill passed in the
last legislative year, and previous, is in fact an act - not merely
of incompetence - but of economic and political sabotage.
Obasanjo prefers to act by executive orders, in direct disregard for the cardinal rule of seperation and balance which regulates the democratic state. The president assumes that he could still rule by diktat, a condition not unrelated to his presumptious military background.
But, even "meaning well" is oxymoronic in a country where services have collapsesd completely, where the security of the state is tenous, where corruption is rife and emanates straight out of the cabinet office, where the party in government is in crisis, and have virtually pulled the rug from under the feet of their flagbearer.
I do believe that the members of the Nigerian parliament are not candidates for canonization, but they have at least done their constitutional duty of pointing the dimension of illegality perpetrated by the presidency headed by retired Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo.
I think (his partisan and ethnic supporters) should drop their
blinkers and see how Obasanjo's political leadership has driven
Nigeria further to ruin. It is visionless, to say the least. But
where it has some vision at all, it is one of the tunnel. By the way,
you want the elected legislators to "leave Obasanjo alone" - and I
should remind those who say this that the legislators were never
elected by their various constituencies to leave the president alone.
They would have no job schedules if they left the affairs of the
country, as emblematized in the executive branch, alone. See where
leaving him alone has brough Nigeria and its affairs to a dismal low.
Nwakanma, a writer-in-residence in St. Louis, is a contributing
editor of USAfricaonline.com and USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
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Africa
suffers the scourge of the 
Africa's
stability
USAfricaonline.com
and USAfrica The Newspaper mourn the death on July 8, 2002
in Michigan of our friend and brother, Houston-based Pan
Africanist, scholar 