Bitter-sweet my life with Obasanjo.

The moral standards of Nigeria's all-powerful ruling class--or its dismal lack of them--have always been the subject of titillating bar-room gossip amongst the country's chattering classes. But there has always been an unwritten rule, similar to the Italian Mafias code of "Omerta" (silence), that members of die exclusive club never wash their dirty linen in public. But Mrs Oluremi Obasanjo, the first wife of the former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, has thrown it all out of the window by publishing a most sensational new book, revealing all on her husband. Osasu Obayiuwana was at the book launch in Lagos, from where he filed this report. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Hell, they say, has no fury like a woman scorned. Oluremi Obsanjo, the first wife of the former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, has given a new twist to this saying by wrtiting what is undoubtedly the most sensational, some would say downright embarrassing, book ever written about the public and private life of a Nigerian president. Titled Bitter-Sweet: My life with Obasanjo, the 63-year-old Oluremi claims in the 130-page book that the former president is a "master in the art of deception", an "exploiter," a "violent and unrepentant wife-basher" and lacking sexual discipline as he unrepentantly engaged in a string of affairs with single and married women (she names several of them in the book), siring several children out of wedlock. But probably not wanting to give credibility to what could be described by Ohasanjo's ardent supporters as the "vituperations of a furious woman scorned", she also acknowledged his good qualities - "a hard-working man", a "good cook" and a man whose intellect made him able to hold his own in the company of presidents and kings.

Acutely aware that the book will set the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons, "Mama Iyabo", as she is popularly known, (named after the couple's first child, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello) is unrepentant about putting together the book that took her three years to write. "I did not write the book to make people happy or sad. I am just telling the story as it is," she said in an interview before the book was officially released on 11 November at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos. "If anybody feels aggrieved [by what I have disclosed in the book] they should write their own book or take me to court," she dared. Reputed to have an uncanny knack for recalling incidents, giving exact places, dates and times, Mrs Obasanjo is so confident about the factual accuracy of the book that she indemnified her publishing house, Diamond Publishers, against the financial consequences of any legal action that any aggrieved person may wish to take. Coming from what she describes as a middle-class family in Abeokuta in southwest Nigeria, with her father working as a station master on the colonial railways, Oluremi had a romance with Olusegun, a local boy who "washed desks in school and worked as a labour to make ends meet". [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

She vividly recalls the afternoon of 8 March 1956, when she met her future husband for the first time: "I headed home after service at Owu Baptist [Church] ... [and] I heard someone saying to me, 'Excuse me, excuse me ... ' I looked him over. He was wearing an agbada on khaki trousers. He wore no shoes, not even the cheap tennis shoes sold for seven shillings and six pence that students wore then. "He introduced himself and started to talk to me about beginning a friendship. 1 didn't take him seriously ... The day after, Yomi, my younger brother by nine months, born of a different mother, brought me a letter from Obasanjo. I threw the letter at Yomi ... warning him to stay clear of Obasanjo." But her resolve was soon to melt, as the young Obasanjo wooed her relentlessly for seven years. The pair finally got married at London's Camber-well Green registry office on the 22 June 1963.

During the ensuing years, a crisis in DRCongo (during which Obasanjo came close to losing his life as a UN peacekeeper), Nigeria's first military coup in 1966, a bloody counter-coup a few weeks later, a three-year civil war between 1967 and 1970 (in which Obasanjo played a key role in the Nigerian effort against the Biafrans), Oluremi became a living witness to the turbulent events that gripped post-independent Nigeria in those early years. Glowing in her praise of her husband s conduct during this period, she describes him in the early pare of the book as "a conscientious officer [and a] dutiful and loyal husband". At this time, she vividly recalls the love that Obasanjo displayed after she had been rushed to an Ibadan hospital for the emergency delivery of cheir son, Olusegun. "My husband was in a council meeting when word reached him [that I was in hospital]. He fled from there to be with me. He was all over me, petting me, fanning me, and generally inquiring after my health. The nurses there were envious of the attention I received and they told me how lucky I was ... " But the fairy-tale romance was too good to be true, as things began to go awry. Oluremi reveals that October 1968 was the beginning of Obasanjo s allegedly serial physical abuse, which she claims was as a result of her confronting him about an affair she suspected he was having. "[It] was barely one month to the arrival of our second child, Busola. An officer's wife had just delivered and I had planned to attend the naming [ceremony] with my friend," Oluremi recounts. "As I was driving out ... a gorgeously dressed woman flagged me down, saying she wanted to see Obasanjo. She introduced herself as a late officer's wife ... "Unsuspectingly, I left her with the nanny Kemi, who later informed me that Obasanjo kissed her on arrival and took her upstairs for some minutes before driving out with her. When I challenged him [about the incident], he replied me with some slaps ..." She subsequently engaged in shouting matches and physical combat with Obasanjo, and a series of women whom she claimed had illicit relations with the ex-Nigerian president. One particular woman, whom she described as a "Judas" was supposedly having an affair with Obasanjo while she was a guest in Oluremi's marital home! When she was convinced of the woman's guilt, Oluremi threatened to kill both her and Obasanjo, and then commit suicide if the woman did not leave her marital home. She fled the house that very night.

Oluremi names other Obasanjo mistresses in the block, some of whom are still alive. She contemptuously describes them as Obasanjo's "stable of ponies". Fed up with his unfaithfulness, Oluremi says she left the marital home after Obasanjo physically threw her out of the house in 1975. "We were [Oluremi and an alleged mistress of Obasanjo's] having a shouting match on the phone when my husband pounced on me and began to curse and punch me," she reveals. "But when I saw him go for a knife, I ran out of the house. "He pursued me. I ran across the road to a house there. Gbenga, my son, who was tailing me, was nearly hit by a car. My husband ... only returned home when he could not locate me in the house. The domestic aides there had shown me an escape route at the back. After he left, they gave me money to take a taxicab out of Ikoyi. 1 made for my Aunty Joke's place ..." Obasanjo's refusal to allow her to return to the marital home, despite the entreaties of extended family members, forced Oluremi to complain about her husband's recalcitrance to leading members of the Nigerian government. She managed to get the sympathetic ear of Obasanjo's colleague, Brigadier (later General) Murtala Muhammed, who subsequently became head of state and Obasanjo's boss. Known for having a volcanic temper, and, in her own words, nor being able to "forgive or forget" a slight, Obasanjo did not take Murtala's subsequent intervention very well. Oluremi says: "He had openly challenged Muhammed to a fight before one of their meetings, when they both served in General Yakubu Gowon's cabinet. Muhammed's offence was that he asked his colleague to treat me fairly as his wife, Obasanjo was enraged that Muhammed was telling him how to take care of his wife. So he grabbed Muhammed by the collar, in the presence of other officers and challenged him to a duel ... It was such an unsightly scene bur peacemakers intervened and separated them." Thus, Oluremi lost the protective cover of Muhammed, who had the shortest stint of any Nigerian leader, when he was assassinated in a failed coup in 1976. Obasanjo, the then chief of staff of Supreme Headquarters and de facto vice-president, assumed office. Now wielding power as the "eniDeror of Nigeria", Oluremi had nowhere to run for succour. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Her battle with Obasanjo over the custody of their children, following a controversial separation, took a turn for the worse. With her husband now military head of state, Oluremi recalls how he took the children away from her. "One day in 1976, he sent a lorry load of soldiers to come for the children. His orderly, Emmanuel Osawe, led them ... I did not give in easily, as I was fearful for the future. So I resisted the troops he sent. In anger, I bit Osawe, kicking and cursing him. ... In the end, naked power triumphed ... my children were taken away and I was left alone." The battle between the two went on for years, with Olurermi refusing entreaties from Obasanjo to return to the marital home, after he relinquished power to a democratically elected government in 1979. Oluremi says she was not prepared to share her marital home with his string of mistresses. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Interestingly, the book clearly shows that Oluremi's emotions about Obasanjo are complex and unresolved. Having to cope with the mood swings of an "unpredictable" man, Oluremi recalls how he began to rekindle her affection for him in 1981, after he began to atone for his alleged neglect of the

children. This led to her getting pregnant with Olufunmilayo (their last child) shortly after, even though the pair were separated and supposedly divorced! The love-hate relationship between the two persisted as Obasanjo went through a series of travails in the mid-1990s. He was arrested and jailed on trumped-up charges of treason by the military dictator Sani Abacha, spending several years in prison and coming close co being poisoned in jail. According to Oluremi, she never abandoned the man she still regards as her husband (as she insists Obasanjo compromised a corrupt judge to effect a phantom divorce, of which she had no knowledge) despite his problems. 'We bore our misfortune honourably and quietly ... Obasanjo exchanged correspondence with me [from jail]. His doctor was always in touch with me ... During his travails, we did all we did away from public glare ..." But on his release in 1998, following Abacha's death, Obasanjo returned to public prominence. Becoming the only man in Nigerian history to be head of state for a second time, (after winning a controversial election on the platform of the People's Democratic Party in 1999), Oluremi claims it did not take too long for "my man" to return to his old ways. With Obasanjo stating that Oluremi's archrival Stella, now deceased, was to be the official first lady, she was determined not to be caught in the whirlwind of Nigeria's complicated and fractious political life, so she opted to live quietly. Commentators would have thought Stella's untimely death, from complications arising from surgery in Europe, would stop Oluremi from dishing the dirt on her nemesis. But "Mama Iyabo", who describes their war for the control of Obasanjo's heart in graphic detail throughout the book, insists she is "generous" in her description of her rival. She says she restrained herself from revealing even more salacious details because Stella had died. One wonders what she would have said! At the book launch, Oluremi carried herself with grace and dignity. It was at variance with some of the shocking things she openly admits to having done over the years - fighting her rivals in the street, biting their breasts, and using coarse language when speaking to those she felt had gravely wronged her. But it is the "warts and all" revelations in the book that have made it a gripping read, as members of the curious chattering classes have eagerly grabbed their copies. It could become Nigeria's all-time best-seller. The fanfare of the book launch, undoubtedly whetted by a serialisation in the Vanguard, one of Nigeria's leading daily newspapers, a week before, can be sharply contrasted with Obasanjo's public reaction to its publication: Silence! He has not uttered a word in response to what his wife or ex-wife--depending on which side of the divide you are on--has said, as he now tackles his latest international assignment, mediating in the intractable DRCongo crisis, at the request of the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. Dealing with the likes of rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, President Joseph Kabila, and the chaos in eastern Congo is probably a piece of cake compared to being the butt of unpleasant jokes back home in Nigeria. Diamond Publishers, a mid-sized outfit located in Surulere, the district of Lagos, hope the media storm generated about the book will see them laughing all the way to the bank.

"We expect the contents of this book to be dissected thoroughly," says Lanre Idowu, the CEO of Diamond Publishers. "Mrs Obasanjo has given her side of the story, but I don't think it is enough for us to sentence the General. I believe it is a credible story. And I also believe that for every issue, there is always more than one side. "The General will probably not react publicly to what has been published, but it is for you and I to read it, analyse it, and pass comment. We as publishers have done our little bit. Whatever results from this [discourse] should be something that enriches the public, from which lessons can be drawn and necessary steps taken to ensure that what we have in our society conforms with what is decent and ennobling." There will be very few right-thinking Nigerians who will disagree with those thoughts. (Bitter-Sweet: My life with Obasanjo by Mrs Oluremi Obasanjo is published by Diamond Publications, 9 James Robertson Street, Surulere, Lagos, Nigeria. Email: sales@diamondpublishing.com and mediareview@yahoo.com Tel: +234-1-872 0238 and 234-1-740 2213).

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