Nigerian Concord Newspaper
Former president Olusegun Obasanjo has perfected the art of the open letter. With each successive administration, the Ota born retired general positions himself as Nigeria’s indispensable conscience. The elder statesman who alone sees the rot, the only one brave enough to call out failure, corruption, and leadership deficit. His epistles arrive with theatrical timing, laden with moral indignation, and are received by a public that has grown wearily familiar with the performance. Yet these letters, for all their thunder, amount to little more than a belated and self-serving attempt at redemption. They cannot erase the record of an administration, indeed, of two stints in power, that left ordinary Nigerians poorer, more insecure, and more disillusioned than it found them. Nor can they whitewash the quiet conversion of a national programme into private estate.
Let us speak plainly about Operation Feed the Nation. Launched in 1976 under military rule, OFN was presented as a patriotic mobilisation: a call for self-sufficiency in food, a revival of agriculture, a collective effort to feed the country. It was sold as a national asset. What followed was something else entirely. Resources, machinery, land, and institutional goodwill associated with that programme found their way into private hands. The farm at Ota that became synonymous with Obasanjo’s post-office identity did not spring from thin air or pure private enterprise. Critics, civil society groups, and independent observers have long documented the transformation: what began as a state-backed agricultural drive mutated into Obasanjo Farms Nigeria Limited, a personal commercial concern. The same initials, OFN, that once stood for a national project now front a private empire. This was not mere coincidence of acronyms. It was the privatisation of a public initiative by those who controlled the levers of state.
Successive administrations have failed to recover or properly account for such conversions of national assets. The pattern is familiar: public programmes announced with fanfare, resources mobilised with public funds, and the benefits concentrated in private hands once the originators leave office. That Obasanjo could later lecture the nation on agricultural failure while sitting atop the very farm that grew out of that era only deepens the irony. He has blamed successors for abandoning the vision. The more honest question is whether the vision was ever primarily about feeding the nation or about securing a lucrative private foothold in agriculture under the cover of state policy.
The broader record of governance under Obasanjo offers little comfort. Whether as military head of state or civilian president, the promise of a better life for the average Nigerian remained largely unfulfilled. Poverty alleviation schemes came and went. Power sector investments consumed billions with little to show in reliable electricity. Infrastructure lagged. Security challenges festered.
The third-term ambition of 2006–2007 revealed a willingness to stretch constitutional boundaries for personal continuity in power. When that failed, the subsequent electoral process that delivered his preferred successor was widely regarded as deeply flawed. These are not the hallmarks of transformative leadership. They are the marks of a tenure that prioritised control, patronage, and personal consolidation over the hard, unglamorous work of lifting living standards for the majority.
It is against this backdrop that the famous letters must be read. When Obasanjo writes to sitting presidents about corruption, incompetence, or the dangers of state capture, he does so as a man whose own record invites the same scrutiny. The letters function less as genuine national therapy and more as a belated claim to moral high ground — a saving grace sought after the fact. They allow the author to occupy the role of critic without fully accounting for the period when he held the ultimate responsibility. Nigerians are invited to forget the unfulfilled promises of Operation Feed the Nation, the persistent hardship under his watch, and the quiet transfer of public agricultural ambition into private ownership. In their place, they are offered the image of the tireless letter-writer, forever disappointed by those who came after him.
A nation cannot be saved by epistles alone. Real saving grace would require an honest reckoning with the past: acknowledgment that national programmes were too easily turned into personal property; admission that eight years of civilian rule and prior military tenure did not deliver the improved quality of life that was repeatedly promised; and a willingness to subject one’s own legacy to the same unsparing standards applied to others. Until that occurs, Obasanjo’s letters will remain what they are — dramatic, quotable, and ultimately insufficient. They arrive too late, and they leave the deeper failures unaddressed.
Nigeria deserves better than recycled outrage from those who once held the power to change outcomes and chose, too often, to change ownership instead. The farm at Ota stands as a physical reminder. The letters are merely the paper trail of a conscience that found its voice after the opportunity for genuine transformation had already been spent.
In rounding up, I humbly wish to counsel that former President Olusegun Obasanjo must abandon the undemocratic practice of selectively endorsing one opposition figure while publicly condemning the rest, for such actions only fracture and weaken the very forces needed to challenge entrenched power. Instead, he should rise to his elder-statesman duty by uniting all opposition leaders in a common, principled front against a government widely seen as corrupt, tyrannical, and oppressive, thereby helping stabilize the nation rather than deepening its divisions. Sacrifices must be made by leaders who are seen as the conscience of the nation to speak out the truth, rally opposition voices together to safe this our democracy from all undemocratic threats and ethos. The principle of rule of law, separation of power, respect for independence of the judiciary, independence of INEC, and anti-graft agencies must not be in operation rhetorically alone but in action.