A golden opportunity to interview General Olusegun Obasanjo slipped by some forty-five years ago. He and his friend, the late Chairman of Punch, Chief Olu Aboderin had arranged for me to spend some of his last hours as Head of State with him and possibly take a ride with him to his new abode in Ogun State. His Press Secretary, Ogbuefi Alex Nwokedi, was supposed to co-ordinate this arrangement. I had a fairly good relationship with Alex Nwokedi having known him years earlier as a fellow Cricket enthusiast and therefore envisaged no problem from him. Unfortunately, as it often happens, he was not briefed. When I called Nwokedi a day to the scheduled meeting to know how I was supposed to move, he candidly told me that he was not aware of such an arrangement and there were too many last minute things on his plate at that time to add a new assignment to them. I was naturally disappointed but I understood his position. It wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last time that leaders would reach an understanding on issues without briefing those who would execute those issues. That was how a scoop fell out of my hands. That was how Punch lost an exclusive.

Over the years, as I matured as an interviewer and as a person, and since General Obasanjo didn’t fade into the proverbial sunset, I have had occasions to reflect on the missed interview and wondered if I would have done a good interview at the time especially after seeing Chief Obasanjo at interviews. Although I had interviewed a couple of Heads of State by this time, they were not my Head of State and they were definitely not Obasanjo.Would I have been able to ask him the hard questions that readers would have wanted to know about the complexity of power in Nigeria and his reasons for handing over the reign of power to that particular civilian government? Or his statement that the best person didn’t necessarily have to win the election? Probably not. Still, General Obasanjo in 1979 would have been easier to handle than the Chief Obasanjo who has emerged over the years. Years after I stopped handling interviews, I still instinctively read and watch interviews with what one could call a professional eye observing nuances and tactics. The current Obasanjo would be difficult for any interviewer and almost impossible for a Nigerian interviewer to handle.There is a righteousness and an overwhelming messianic disposition about him that do not fit the facts on the ground. There is a brusqueness that could make an unskilled interviewer uncomfortable. On top of this, is the tendency to dominate an interview. These dispositions would make it difficult for alternative views to be heard. To interview Chief Obasanjo in a way that would not lead to arguments and rancor would take skill, patience and courage. It would help to have documented facts and would probably be better done by an ‘outsider’.

This is why I found his interview with BBC’s Hard Talk that went viral very interesting. The interviewer was able to make him look into a mirror. Chief Obasanjo was doing the interview to promote a book he co-wrote which talked about a ticking time-bomb called population explosion in Africa. He was asked if he had the right to preach on the subject of population given that he had, according to the interviewer, twenty children from many women. That put him on the defensive; a good tactic when interviewing someone like Chief Obasanjo. He was specifically asked why he liked criticizing leaders when his record as a leader was not that astounding. That again, put him on the defensive. He was taken up on corruption, democracy and transformative leadership in Africa and why he failed to lead by example in those areas. Of course Chief Obasanjo fought back. It would not be him if he didn’t. This led to the interviewer referring to an appellation of him as ‘the father of corruption’ by the National Assembly. There were denials and raised voices as expected but for me, the success of the interview was that someone held a mirror to his face. It helped of course, that the interviewer had interviewed him before.

According to the book, Nigeria’s population was forty million at Independence. Today, we are hovering around two hundred million with a projection to reach four hundred million by 2050.It is really a ticking time bomb given the state of our infrastructure. In fact, the bomb has been leaking in places now for a while. This is not peculiar to Nigeria. It is the story of all African countries. Niger Republic even has a worse projection according to the book. Worse, is the failure of leadership across Africa and the failure to address critical, transformative issues. Someone needed to sound the alarm and if it fell on someone who had the chance to stem the tide but failed, so be it. It is one of those times when we should concentrate on the message and not the messenger.

Chief Obasanjo went all the way to America to critique his country and publicly mock its leader. I found this unbecoming of any patriot let alone a former President. It is called washing dirty linen in public, something he would never have tolerated when he was in power. It is easy to throw his records concerning INEC, democracy, rule of law and State capture back at him. These were what he accused the current leader of violating. His own records on those fronts were not very encouraging to say the least. In addition, he was the longest serving Head of State and had his chance to reform the country and possibly change its current trajectory, principally because he was the first President to operate, and therefore interpret the 1999 constitution. If only he had devolved power to the States and Local Governments, ethnic agitations might have been doused and we might have had a better development across the country. Instead, he collapsed power even further to the center and virtually made himself the alpha and omega in the country, removing Governors, Senate Presidents and party Chairmen at will. That history should still record him as a better leader in terms of performance than many we’ve had says something about the quality of our leaders over the years.

Part of his strengths is that he knows what is good and says it boldly and bluntly; only that he was too arbitrary and too consumed with messianic self-importance to do the things he now says when he was in power. That is why we must focus on his message and not on him. Many of the things he said about the current administration at the Chinua Achebe lecture had a ring of truth. Tinubu would do well to read the speech again and learn from it.

•Muyiwa Adetiba is a veteran journalist and publisher. He can be reached viatitbits2012@yahoo.com