Obasanjo: The Troubling Shadow(s) of Third Term Campaign

Eniola bello

“When did I ask for a third term,” he bellows, half sitting, half standing, his face contorted in an angry scowl, his thin eyes sinking deeper into their sockets, his two hands raised over his head clutching the book into a projectile ferociously hurled in my direction. The book landed with a thud on the table between us, then bounced and dropped harmlessly on the floor to my left foot.

“Show me the evidence of where or when I said I wanted a third term,” he demands, shouting, stabbing the air with his forefinger in my direction, his snake eyes boring into me. “Show me,” he asserts, dragging the words loudly for emphasis.

Cool, calm and unperturbed, I sat there, taking in all his shouting and visible anger and violent reaction, a suppressed smile playing in the corners of my lips, partly amused and partly confused. I had arrived at his office at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) about 10.30 am a week ago today, to keep an appointment Dr. Agbai Eke Agbai, a friend and brother, and a member of OOPL Board, had helped book the previous night. At Agbai’s advice and insistence, I had kept the appointment to present to former President Olusegun Obasanjo a copy of my two-volume book, SHADOWS: Protest Essays on Africa’s Most Consequential Country (1999 – 2023), as part of the build-up to the public presentation scheduled for July 23, 2026. In Volume 2 of the book, there are two or three critical essays on the tenure extension scheme, otherwise known as the third term agenda which, more than any policy or programme, negatively defined the Obasanjo administration. I had thought that 20 years after the failed attempt to extend his tenure in office, time would have simmered Obasanjo’s volatility to criticism, particularly his constant denial of any involvement in the tenure elongation scheme. How mistaken I was!

On arriving at Obasanjo’s office building which is situated within the expansive premises of the OOPL, I called Seyi Solomon, the Personal Assistant, Domestic to the former president. Already aware of my appointment, Seyi, as he is generally addressed, asked the security to allow me in, and I was quickly directed to the 4th Floor, a waiting area for those who had appointments to see the former president. And there were quite a few people – men and women – patiently waiting, some carrying files in their arms, and from their familiarity with the general environment, I assumed they were senior managers of some of his companies. A little over an hour later, Obasanjo walked in and I was immediately ushered before him.

“Agbai says you want to see me. What is it about?”, he asks.

“I’m here to present you my book,” I reply, bringing the bookcase out of a bag specifically designed for it. He quickly collected the case containing the two volumes, examined it and moved towards a small single sofa in one corner of the room, removing the books from the case as he sat down. As I followed him, he pointed at the opposite sofa to the one he sat, a flat low table in the middle.

“Sit down,” he says.

He started with Volume 1, flipping through the pages forward and backward, pausing on one page, and stopping on another, to read one or two sentences of an essay he finds of interest; then jumping to another page, and yet another, before again pausing for a few seconds to read.

“You are a columnist!”

“Yes,” I answer, not sure if it was a statement or question before adding, “A substantial number of the essays are on your administration.”

Dropping Volume 1, he picked up Volume 2; going through the same motions, he flipped through the pages back and forth like there was a particular essay he was searching for. When he again stopped on a page and readjusted himself on the sofa, I quickly stole a look at where he stopped and realised it was the middle of an essay entitled, ‘Burying the Third Term Bogey’. It took less than five seconds of pausing to read a few sentences on that page before he exploded, angrily turning the book into a missile of sort.

“You wrote here the evidence is touchable. So, show me the evidence of how I asked for a third term,” he thunders, picking up the book from the floor, dropping it on the table and standing up from the sofa.

“I didn’t write that you asked for a third term,” I begin my defence, standing up to face him. Even without reading the essay in question, I knew I couldn’t have written that he personally requested a third term in office.

The essay in question, at the time it was written, was a response to a press statement by Chief Onyema Ugochuckwu, a former chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission and an accomplished journalist in his own right. Ugochukwu had described the third term agenda as a hoax created by the media to serve some vested interests and blamed journalists for unfairly accusing Obasanjo, without credible evidence, of nursing a third term ambition. In my response to Ugochukwu, I had attempted to provide credible evidence to show that the third term campaign was not a media invention nor was it a hoax. I had partly argued in that essay, reproduced on pages 125-131 of Volume 2 of SHADOWS, thus:

‘What credible evidence did the media have in accusing Obasanjo of nursing a third term ambition? The evidence is touchable even by the politically blind. The evidence is there in the way the proposal for a three four-year term was smuggled into the document for public hearing. It is there in the Southwest PDP leaders’ public declaration of support for another term for Obasanjo. It is there in the serial endorsement by some state governors (Enugu’s Chimaroke Nnamani, Rivers’ Peter Odili and Ondo’s Segun Agagu) of the president for another term. It is there in the frustration and isolation of likely opponents of the agenda from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the guise of membership revalidation. It is there in the refusal of those who want to be president to raise their heads, a refusal borne out of fear. More crucially, it is there in Obasanjo’s inability to say categorically that he has no intention of contesting the 2007 presidential polls even if the constitution was amended to allow him so to do.’

This appears to be the paragraph, in part or in whole, that so irked Obasanjo and for which he turned the book into a handy weapon.

“But you mentioned my name as having a third term agenda,” he avers.

“Of course, the third term campaign was about you, executed by some of your aides and political associates. It’s impossible to talk about it without mentioning your name. And you have not even read the essay except for one or two sentences. I did not write anywhere that you asked for a third term,”  I push back.

“Are you saying I do not understand English? You do not come to my house to insult me. Get out of here,” he barks, storming past me into another office.

One gentleman among the people who had been waiting for him walked up to me. “You don’t have to argue with him when he’s angry. Let him cool down first,” he says in a lowered voice.

I was still weighing what to make of the gentleman’s advice when I heard Obasanjo walking back towards me, saying before disappearing into another room: “I didn’t ask for a third term. If I wanted a third term, I would have gotten it. If I could travel round the world to ask for debt forgiveness and got it, was it a third term I wouldn’t have been able to get if I wanted it? Get out of my house.”

I looked at the old man and chuckled. It occurred to me that Obasanjo has lied to himself for so long on this matter that he practically believes his own lies. For almost one year in 2006, the third term campaign was a running story in the media. It developed a corruption ecosystem of its own with National Assembly members being induced left, right and centre. Some state governors in the then ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) who ordinarily had presidential ambition were too scared to show their interest in the office. Although Obasanjo was never quoted as asking for a third term, neither was  he ever reported as denouncing the widespread campaign for a constitutional amendment to make it happen. He preferred to play the ostrich, burying his head in the sand and unbothered that the rump of his yansh was visible to everybody. There were whispering campaigns that some of those actively involved in the intrigues of the third term campaign did disclose at private moments that Obasanjo vowed to deny any involvement should the project fail. And he indeed denied any involvement the moment the constitutional amendment proposal for a three four-year term collapsed in the Senate.

He even stuck to that lie when his American friends cautioned him against tampering with the constitution to extend his tenure in office. When at a meeting at the White House Oval Office on March 29, 2006, the then President George W. Bush had emphasized the importance of constitutional transitions to avoid political conflict in Nigeria, Obasanjo had denied any plans to extend his stay in office. On Page 638 of No Higher Honour: A Memoir of My Years in Office, Condoleezza Rice, a former US Secretary of State, threw more light on Obasanjo’s discussion with Bush on the tenure extension scheme.

Writes Rice, “In 2006, when President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria sidled up to the President (Bush) and suggested that he might change the Constitution so that he could serve a third term, the President (Bush) told him not to do it. “You’ve served your country well. Now turn over power and become a statesman,” he’d said.” Of course, Obasanjo dismissed Rice’s account as false and denied discussing tenure elongation with Bush.

It is a surprise that 20 years after the third term campaign, Obasanjo is still living in his structurally defective castle of lies. If as president, his lies did not have any leg to stand on, why would it be different today? Whatever Obasanjo may say or do, the failed attempts to extend his tenure would continue to cast shadows (pun intended) on whatever remained of his presidential legacy. Neither bullying nor violent reaction, real or performative, would ever change that.