President Muhammadu Buhari and his senior aides must have spent this past weekend trying to decipher the inner meaning and long-term implications of broadsides about his Administration released for public consumption last week  by two of his predecessors.

The first, from former President Olusegun Obasanjo, was a no-hold-barred excoriation. There is no doubting its author, for it is composed in the blunt, sledge-hammer tradition of political pamphleteering that is his trademark. He painted in broad strokes what he regarded as Buhari’s failures, urged him not to seek a second term, and announced he was going to convene a Coalition for Nigeria to chart the way forward, unencumbered by the dysfunctions of the existing political parties and their superannuated leaders.

To almost everyone’s surprise, the Coalition registered its arrival on the scene in Abeokuta less than 48 hours later, with Obasanjo himself, former Osun State Governor, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, and Donald Duke, former Cross River State governor and a presidential wannabe for 2019, among other veterans.

Even Ahmadu Ali - the same Ali of the 1977 campus upheavals, and more recently chairman of the inept PDP would not be left out. It has also been reported that our good friend Professor Jerry Gana, former director-general of the defunct Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI), former director-general of the defunct Directorate for Social Mobilisation, former Minister of Agriculture etc, etc, is standing by to enlist

Give it to Obasanjo: No one ever accused him of dilatoriness.

But it is the second broadside and its postscript that are of concern here. The former came in the name of former military president Ibrahim Babangida, and was released to the media by his spokesperson of 14 years, Mr Kassim Afegbua.

In vain does one comb it for the former military president’s deft footwork, his subtlety and his willful obfuscation, all designed to give him room for escape and leave him unscathed in any ensuing rage.

He dismissed Buhari as an analog president in an era that calls for a digital leader and challenged him to produce evidence of the “change” he said had come to lead.

He described the killings in Benue by Fulani cattle herdsmen as a “pogrom” and brought to public attention an incident in Dansauda, in Zamfara State, in which “over 200 souls were wasted for no justifiable reason.”

“In the fullness of our present realities,” the statement said, “we need to cooperate with President Muhammadu Buhari to complete his term of office ‪on May 29, 2019‬ and collectively prepare the way for a new generation of leaders to assume the mantle of leadership in Nigeria.”

Babangida stated that he did not intend to deny Buhari his inalienable right to vote and be voted for.  “But there comes a time in the life of a nation,” he added poignantly, when personal ambition should not override national interest.”

This does not sound like Babangida. My textual analysis leads me to conclude that it is Afegbua’s composition all right. In tone and phrasing, not forgetting the barbs planted here and there, it bears a striking resemblance to many statements he had issued previously for his principal.

I recall a particular one, responding to Obasanjo’s caustic attack on Babangida,   Afegbua seized on some unsavoury disclosures of Obasanjo’s estranged son, Gbenga, to bludgeon Obasanjo literally and figuratively below the belt.

Even if that was his remit, I warned on this page, he should have discharged it with greater circumspection. Remember, I admonished him, that there was life after Babangida.

Reading the broadside he issued recently in Babangida’s name, I thought, “Here we go again.” This time I was sure Babangida would disavow the explosive statement credited to him and leave his spokesperson to rue the consequence.

So, when another statement arrived in Babangida’s name, disavowing the one previously issued by Afegbua, I chuckled.  Vindication, at last. Afegbua had finally overreached himself.

And when police Inspector-General Ibrahim Idris reportedly ordered Afegbua arrested for making a “fake statement,” it looked as if Afegbua was doomed.

On close examination, I can state with confidence that the statement in question could not have been written by Afegbua.  The grammatical flaws gave the game away.  “It has been drawn to my attention a press statement . . .” it began.  It spoke of how political events and civil unrest in many parts of the country “has raised many questions” on governance and unity.

It characterized 2018 as being “inundated with seasons of literatures” on the corporate existence of Nigeria and how “many of such literatures have shown concerns of the corporate existence of Nigeria beyond the 2019 general elections.”

Shortly thereafter, Afegbua appeared on television and gave interviews in which he said he stood by his earlier statement on behalf of Babangida, and that he had his principal’s authority to say that much.

So, what went wrong?

Afegbua’s explanation has a persuasive ring.

When the first statement was issued and some of Babangida’s friends saw how it had been sensationalized in social media, they  were worried that it might put him on a collision course with Buhari by the social media, and then took it upon themselves to issue the lexically-challenged rebuttal.

Afegbua said Babangida had called him to say that the original statement stood, and that its “kernel” was designed to inform public discourse, not to be taken as an attack on Buhari’s person.

And at this writing, Afegbua has not been arrested.

So, there you have it.

But there is this lingering question: What is the calculating resident of the Minna Hilltop Mansion really up to?

It is an outrageous thought, but is he testing the waters against 2019?  Is his aim to be counted with Obasanjo as a statesman who warned against the forces impeding good governance and undermining national cohesion, while leaving himself an escape hatch in case of reprisals? Was he putting the final seal on his 1985 broadcast announcing and justifying Buhari’s ouster as military Head of State, followed by almost two years in detention? Is this a way of making up for the umpteenth time with Obasanjo?

You never know with IBB.