Temidayo Akinsuyi, Lagos
Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), Chairman of the
Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), has
recommended that the Federal Government should take over the management
of Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) located in Abeokuta,
the Ogun State capital, in order to sustain it and preserve it as a
national monument.
The library whose donation was made during the
twilight of Obasanjo’s presidency in 2005 was finally launched in 2017.
A lot of civil society organisations and lawyers have petitioned the
Federal Government to probe the funding of the library, claiming many of
the donors were public officials and contractors.
Speaking on
calls by some Nigerians that the library should be managed by the
Federal Government, Sagay said he does not support the way Obasanjo was
treating the library as his personal property when it should be a public
institution.
While asking the Federal Government to persuade
Obasanjo to hand over the major aspect of running the library to the
government for better management, Sagay argued that while the library
will still be in Obasanjo’s name, it should be supervised by the Federal
Government so that it will not lose its value even after Obasanjo’s
demise.
He said, “Obasanjo is a very unique type of person in
many ways. He doesn’t follow laid down standards, conventions and
practices. He takes control and personalises everything. To start with,
that library was not built by private donations.
“It was built
with public funds from heads of various Nigerian public institutions
whose arms were twisted to produce huge sums of money. Some even donated
in billions. So, it is not something done by Obasanjo through
persuasion or private donors, it is built by public funds. So, really,
this is the best case why it should be supervised by the Federal
Government even though it was built in Obasanjo’s name.
“So, I
don’t agree with the way Obasanjo is treating it as a purely personal
property. But that is his nature. He is an authoritarian person.
“My
suggestion will be that the Federal Government should not forcefully
take it over from him. But Obasanjo should be gently reminded that
institutions belong to the country, not him personally and that he
should gradually arrange to handover the major aspects of the running to
the Federal Government.
“And if he doesn’t agree, maybe after
his demise, the Federal Government should just take it over after
passing some legal provisions. The library will still be in his land and
in his name but it will be managed by the Federal Government.
“In
fact, it enhances the status of the library if it becomes a state-owned
property rather than privately owned. Otherwise, I don’t wish him to
pass away soon. May he live long much longer…. But when the inevitable
comes, the library may suffer if it is not a public library.
“We
have seen so many families where they fight over even little property
when the founder passes away and at the end, it is either abandoned or
desecrated and they are in court for decades. That won’t be appropriate
for such an institution as the presidential library”, he said.
However,
speaking on the issue, Prince Tony Momoh, a former Minister of
Information, argued that the Federal Government has no business with the
library as it was a private project owned by Obasanjo, though he
requested and got donations for it while in office as president.
Momoh,
one of the national leaders of the ruling All Progressives Congress
(APC), also cautioned the government against carrying vendetta too far.
Rather
than take over Obasanjo’s library, Momoh advised the Federal Government
to focus its attention on thousands of public libraries littered across
the country that are in dilapidated state.
“The library is
Obasanjo’s personal property and he asked people to donate and they
donated. He then built the library which is highly patronised today,
people hold meetings there and so on. How can anybody deny what the
library was meant to be? Was it meant to be public or private? If it was
public, which government set it up?
“Let us not carry our
preoccupation with vendetta too far. That is a library pioneered by
Obasanjo which is for public use. The motive for setting up the library
is what we should be looking at. I am sure it is not a Federal
Government property and it is not an Ogun State or any state’s property.
“I
think it is a private and personal property that he used his position
as president to influence the donations to that library. But that is a
moral issue. I remember that even Fayose said he was forced to donate
N10 million and he asked Obasanjo to refund it to Ekiti State.
“You
will discover that after he left office, the donations fell. A lot of
the large donors did not even show off after he left office. If he had
waited till after his tenure as president to collect that money, maybe
he couldn’t have collected 10 percent of it.
“So, he acted smart
by asking for donations while he was still in office as president and
got them. So, I don’t think anybody should be talking about anybody
running Obasanjo’s library. There are lots of public libraries
established. Go there today, many of the roofs are leaking. Government
should go and focus on that”, he said.
When contacted, Obasanjo’s
spokesman, Kehinde Akinyemi, said he will give our correspondent the
number of the managing director of the library so as to speak on the
issue but he couldn’t do so as at the time of going to press.
Source:- Independentng
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