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Retired Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo’s biography My Watch reveals how attending Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s funeral in 1994 following Raila Odinga’s invitation, was one of the reasons he was arrested and detained by the late President Sani Abacha.
“I was invited by Raila for the final funeral rites for his father, Jaramogi Oginga, and for the dedication of his mausoleum in Kenya,” Obasanjo reveals in a chapter titled My Arrest: The Abacha Saga.
“The instruction given to the security at the Nigerian Embassy and the report written by the Nigerian security in Kenya...
It was to the effect that since Oginga Odinga was in opposition to the government of Kenya when he died, I had gone to Kenya to create problems for the Kenyan government by supporting the opposition, and the Nigerian government should restrain me from causing great problems between Nigeria and Kenya. I was interrogated on this same issue when Abacha arrested me.”
The house arrest and imprisonment grounded his political life. His ranch was also degraded, forcing most workers to flee.
Obasanjo, who considers himself a Godsend ‘watchman’ to Nigerians, was a career soldier before serving twice as his nation’s head of state, as a military ruler from 13 February 1976 to 1 October 1979 and as a democratically elected president from 29 May 1999 to 29 May 2007.
He made history as the first military ruler to hand over power to a civilian.
But just what attracted him to the military?
“Three things... first, preparing myself for examinations, I saw the advertised recruitment for officers as an opportunity to test myself and see how ready I was for the examination I was preparing for,” said the General, who entertained fasting and praying as habits.
“Second was my love for adventure and the unknown - a bit of inquisitiveness... third, my lack of resources to further my education without waiting, made me available to try other avenues. The focus was education, and the military became the means.”
While My Watch is couched in simple, easy-read grammar, Obasanjo agrees that biographies tend to be boring.
He notes in the introduction that, “If my writing does not excite, sensitise, and motivate you, wake you up with a blow to the head, inspire and energise you into serious thinking and rethinking, and galvanise you into action and reaction, then it has not achieved much.”
My Watch has courted controversies in Nigeria with President Goodluck Jonathan’s confidants unsuccessfully seeking a court injunction to stop its publication.
The former governor of Ogun State, Obasanjo’s home ground, termed the General “a big liar and untruthful chronicler of history,” adding that, “I will write a book to debunk the tissues of lies that Obasanjo has written in his book.”
