If there was a prize for Nigeria’s number one letter writer, journalist-turned-lawyer and one-time minister, Tony Momoh, would appear to be the undisputed champion.
It would seem that this was a latter-day hobby, cultivated in the last one and a half decades or so after Obasanjo was accused of behaving as if he left something behind in office. But a new book by Nigeria’s foremost investigative journalist, multiple award-winner, and Editor-In-Chief of Premium Times, Musikilu Mojeed, suggests very clearly that Obasanjo’s love of letter-writing has been a life-long indulgence.
Apart from letters written to him by his parents 70 years ago, he started cultivating his love of correspondences as far back as over five decades ago. In Mojeed’s words, “Obasanjo’s records show that he has been writing to almost every key person who played important roles in the affairs of Nigeria, Africa and the world since 1969.
Obasanjo did not spare his commander-in-chief, Gowon. During the war, for example, he wrote “at least four unsparing letters”, accusing the military authorities of tempting defeat by sleepwalking over his request for vital war equipment supplies, a charge that, if the shoe had been on the other foot, Obasanjo would hardly have taken with the calmness with which Gowon treated it.
If the letterman’s missile to Oluleye stood out for its length and sarcasm, the cache of letters to Babangida in this collection was remarkable for both length and sarcasm, not to mention their frequency, intensity and, well, damning wit. Yet, given Babangida’s gift for taking Nigeria for a ride at the time, not a few thought he was eminently deserving of Obasanjo’s bitter tongue.
Obasanjo gave as much as he took. Yet, in over five decades of his epistolary odyssey, two responses to his letters shed important light on his psychology.