Wole Olujobi, in his withering

• Published date: 15 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

'2023: Obasanjo And The Legend Of Tenea', article approximates former president Olusegun Obasanjo to 'Oedipus orientation in consummate complexity'.

'Raised and reared to preserve a kingdom, Oedipus, a grand patron of hubris, fell into a complex interplay of fate and pride to become an albatross to the kingdom he sought to preserve'.

Let us quote him at some length.

'Sophocles in his play 'Oedipus Rex' presents a gripping narrative of a man at the mercy of fate, but who pride would not allow to rediscover himself until he suffers irredeemable consequences.

The ancient legend of Oedipus, the mythical king of Thebes who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, in several of his sojourns, lived in Tenea, a mythical lost city in Greece, according to the Greek mythology'.

As recently as 1984, one of Greece's top archaeologists, Eleni Korka, a Greek-American, made the biggest discovery of her 40-year career: the mythical city of Tenea, which was built by Trojan prisoners of war sometime around 1100BC.

After a laborious excavation by Korka and her team, the abandoned Tenea City in ruins was discovered to harbour golden carvings and other precious, high levels of art that could turn the fortunes of the delerict city of Tenea for good.

As it is with both Oedipus and Tenea, so it is for Nigeria and General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd), former President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as Nigerians again prepare for the February 2023 ballot to elect their President. After long years of misrule that left Nigerians at the mercy of poverty and Nigeria herself in the throe of ruins, conscious efforts were made to find a befitting leader to turn the nation's fortunes for good after the conspiracy among the Nigerian ruling elite claimed MKO Abiola's life in 1998, the unfortunate incident that sank Nigeria in the abyss like was the case with the lost city of Tenea.

And so like archaeologist Korka, Nigerian 'archaeologists' in military fatigue led by Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdusalami Abubakar, dug through the length and breadth of the thoroughly degraded Nigeria to find a leader to turn the nation's fortunes for good. Their search through 'diligent excavation', just like that of Korka, yielded Obasanjo, who had already decayed in General Sani Abacha's gulag like the ruins of Tenea. Pronto, most parts of Nigeria hooted, prospecting that the nation had found fortune and so had hit the road to prosperity.

But unlike Korka, what Nigeria's excavators found was never...