By LANRE OGUNDIPE One of the greatest disservices we can do to history is to allow it to become the exclusive property of those who once wielded power. History belongs not to presidents alone, but also to governors, legislators, judges, traditional rulers, party leaders, journalists and ordinary citizens who witnessed the events of their time. When competing narratives emerge, our duty is neither to applaud nor to condemn.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent attempt to revisit the political events surrounding the 2003 elections deserves precisely that kind of interrogation. Not because he was not a central actor—he undoubtedly was—but because he was not the only actor. History seldom has only one witness.
Fortunately, we are not compelled to choose between fading memories or partisan loyalties. We have before us the documentary record, including the memoir of another principal participant, Chief Olusegun Osoba. In Battlelines: Adventures in Journalism and Politics, published in 2018—years before the present controversy—Osoba painstakingly recounts the negotiations between the Presidency, Afenifere and the Alliance for Democracy (AD).
He identifies the principal actors, the venues, the constitutional questions under discussion and the political understandings that, according to him, shaped the decisions leading to the 2003 elections. According to Osoba, these were not casual political courtesies. Meetings held at Dodan Barracks, Ota Farm and the Presidential Villa brought together Chief Abraham Adesanya, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Dr.
Cornelius Adebayo, Senator Femi Okunrounmu, respected traditional rulers led by the Awujale of Ijebuland and eminent clerics, including Bishop Emmanuel Gbonigi and Archbishop Ayo Ladigbolu. The agenda, as he records it, included restructuring, devolution of powers, fiscal federalism, meritocracy, a credible national census and guarantees of free and fair elections. Osoba’s central contention is not that discussions never took place.
His argument is that the assurances upon which Afenifere and the Alliance for Democracy based crucial political decisions were ultimately not fulfilled. That is a serious historical claim. It deserves engagement rather than summary dismissal.
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