The Letterman: Musikilu Mojeed and the quidditas of letter-writing, By Inih A. Ebong

With his fine paint brush, Mojeed provides the necessary background for the letters without any analysis or commentary of his own, thereby leaving the reader to form and be responsible for his own opinion after interacting with the letters. By adopting this style of presentation, the author concerns himself mostly with the quidditas of the letters and their prevailing circumstances.

The Letterman by Musikilu Mojeed is a compendium of sorts woven around the complex but phenomenal personality of General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd.; GCFR), as a war veteran and later military head of state and two-time civilian president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The book is a beautiful collection of the letters exchanged between Obasanjo and his superior and subordinate military officers, alongside senior government officials and politicians in his military and civilian governments. They also include letters between Obasanjo and other African heads of state, the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the American President, Jimmy Carter, among others. Mojeed presents these letters in 25 compelling chapters numbering 466 pages, excluding the 33 preliminary pages with the “Foreword” and “Introduction” contributed by Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former secretary-general of the Commonwealth, and distinguished journalist, Dan Agbese, respectively.

Poring through the pages of The Letterman, one gets the impression that letter-writing is an essential part of Obasanjo’s DNA, and he is very compulsive and scrupulous about it, and very good and meticulous at record keeping. The letters display uncommon courage and boldness, and frankness too, and are generally fiery, sometimes even direct and acerbic, on those subjects and issues that touch Obasanjo’s heart the most.

For example, he dared the eye of the storm and stridently confronted Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Carter on the obnoxious policies of apartheid and the liberation struggles in southern Africa – Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and the frontline states. The letters also portray Obasanjo as a great patriot, a great nationalist, and pan-Africanist, who abhors all forms of injustice, bad governance, corruption, and betrayal. Back home in Nigeria, the likes of Alabi-Isama (Chapter 7), Oluleye (Chapter 8), and Audu Ogbeh (Chapter 18), among others, cannot forget in a hurry the hot missiles that were fired at them from Obasanjo’s tactical and strategic pen. The pen had become for Obasanjo not only a tool for communication and governance, but also a lethal weapon of war, even in peace time.

But Obasanjo did not always win the battle or have his way all the time. Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State, dropped one “Ogbunigwe“ (Biafran-made bomb) on 22 August 2005 (Chapter 19), that made Obasanjo sobre as he scampered for safety under the protective wings of the ICPC and the EFCC, the two babies he created in 2000 and 2002, respectively, to fight corruption and money laundering in Nigeria! There comes a time when the falcon can no longer hear the falconer, and things fall apart as the centre can no longer hold. Since Orji Uzor Kalu dropped his own bomb on Obasanjo, the face and modus operandi of corruption in Nigeria have become so brazen and unstoppable that corruption, and not the ICPC or the EFCC, is winning the battle! But Orji Uzor Kalu forgot a fundamental lesson in this kind of warfare; that of not rattling the snake, but killing it. He forgot that he was daring a master tactician and strategist in warfare, politics, governance, and diplomacy, and was to pay dearly for it in prison for the same allegation of corruption he made against Obasanjo.

The Letterman could not have come at a better time than now that history had been reintroduced into the secondary school curriculum after it had been banned by the Ministry of Education. Mojeed has made a major and significant contribution to history, particularly Nigerian and African history, and has single-handedly unveiled the true Obasanjo and changed or corrected the erstwhile misconceptions that people had about him.

Not all the letters were hot exchanges between Obasanjo and their recipients. His letters from prison (Chapter 14), and those to Jay Jay Okocha and Serena Williams (Chapter 16), clearly portray the warm, humane, friendly, caring, loving, and fatherly nature of Obasanjo, contrary to the negative images that have been painted of him by every arm and department of the Nigerian media. Chapter 14 in particular portrays Obasanjo’s deep faith in God and his Christian beliefs. As a pan-Africanist, the tone and texture of his letters to fellow African heads of state were always warm and brotherly.

Musikilu Mojeed is a veteran and multiple award-winning journalist. According to him, the idea of writing The Letterman came to him “by accident” on 15 January, 2014; and, as a departure from his mainstream journalism, this is his first attempt at writing a book. These notwithstanding, The Letterman is a classic and the first of its kind in Nigeria in its content, depth, and style of presentation. Each chapter of the book is uniquely captioned to compel, arrest, and engage the interest and attention of the reader until he reaches the end of the book. With his fine paint brush, Mojeed provides the necessary background for the letters without any analysis or commentary of his own, thereby leaving the reader to form and be responsible for his own opinion after interacting with the letters. By adopting this style of presentation, the author concerns himself mostly with the quidditas of the letters and their prevailing circumstances. For example, what was the essence of the hot exchanges between Obasanjo and Margaret Thatcher, or the warm-hearted, brotherly exchanges between him and his fellow African heads of state?

The Letterman could not have come at a better time than now that history had been reintroduced into the secondary school curriculum after it had been banned by the Ministry of Education. Mojeed has made a major and significant contribution to history, particularly Nigerian and African history, and has single-handedly unveiled the true Obasanjo and changed or corrected the erstwhile misconceptions that people had about him. This book is highly recommended to every literate Nigerian – and African – young and old, and deserves to be given a pride of place in every private and public library.      

Inih A. Ebong is associate professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Uyo.