You can accuse the Bola Tinubu administration of failing on all fronts, but one thing you will never be able to say about his over-bloated press team is that they do not show up when their principal suffers disgrace. This time, the target of their ire was former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who, during a recent paper presentation at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum at Yale University, said Nigeria had become a “failed state” due to the policies of former president Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu. Obasanjo mentioned two ex-presidents by their nicknames, but only one leaped at him with feral rage. Out of the presidency and away from the structures that covered his detachedness from administration, Buhari’s lack of impulse is more starkly revealed. He probably does not care to revisit the scene of his crime, and neither do his aides—whom I guess he has stopped paying—think they have any record worth putting straight.

Still, do not confuse the well-coordinated counterattacks that the Tinubu administration has been firing in the direction of Obasanjo for their administrative efficiency. What you are looking at is a people who have devoted a significant chunk of their professional media career to serving Tinubu’s image since 1999, when he first became Lagos governor. If Tinubu’s hired hands could promptly come up with the right receipts to stick it to the perpetually meddlesome Obasanjo and pull him down from the moral high ground he climbs to fire salvos at each of his successors, it is because their principal and Obasanjo have been pecking at each other’s intestines for a while.

Their contest of wills began a while ago, and they still will not let up. Whatever is between them will never end, and who cares? Two wizened old men who decide to strip each other down in public at least make for good entertainment. The only disappointing aspect is that much of what they are saying is already public record. There is nothing that the Tinubu’s boys have brought up so far that is not already known. For an over-padded media team, that is unacceptable. Why are they being paid if they cannot do more digging? Anyway, I hope they keep up the fight until they eventually reach the point where both sides will start to reveal where the bodies are buried. Let them say the worst about Obasanjo, and hopefully he responds to them in like fashion. By the time they finish stripping each other naked in public, Nigerians can decide which of them is the more horrible disaster from an informed perspective.

What is really amusing about their exchange is how the APC is reacting to being paid back in its own self-righteous coin. These were the same people who gained crucial political mileage from lobbing similar attacks at sitting presidents when they were the opposition party from 1999 to 2015. Now that they are in power, they cannot take even a fraction of what they dished out. They are overly sensitive to criticism and will not hesitate to shred their “progressive” label to punish a critic. Like the proverbial decapitator who will not let anyone pass a machete behind the back of their heads, these people did not let Obasanjo’s speech land before they started sending their attack hounds after him. They know his influence and the significance of the institutional space where he made fun of their failing government. Considering how they have exploited similar resources to promote disaffection against a sitting government, they really should be afraid. Yorubas anticipated their character when they say that the person who spits on the floor and quickly uses their feet to wipe it knows what they too have done with someone else’s saliva.

Unfortunately for the APC media boys, reality vindicates Obasanjo at their expense. Having been out of power for about 18 years, the memories of his government’s failings have long receded. Also, given how progressively worse Obasanjo’s successors have fared, he now looks like a Mandela compared to each of them. The accusations of corruption and power abuse that the Tinubu’s boys have hurled against Obasanjo in the past few days look juvenile compared to what persists. Our idea of how much one can steal before being called “thief” has so shifted that the billions of dollars allegedly stolen under Obasanjo’s watch now seem like mere coins in contrast to the legalised heist routinely ongoing in Nigeria. Imagine Tinubu and his caterwaulers thinking they can impress any right-thinking person by calling Obasanjo “corrupt”! LOL!

Yes, Obasanjo might be a high-grade hypocrite, but he did not say a single thing that most Nigerians do not find relatable. Buhari and Tinubu combined have decimated Nigerians economically and ethically; yelling at Obasanjo for failing to maintain the self-restraint one expects of ex-presidents will not change that. When the man was criticising Goodluck Jonathan, did you not take him for a statesman?

Tinubu, of course, has a right to be angry at the man for calling out their failures. Obasanjo might be speaking the truth, but his grandstanding is also what happens when a country persistently fails to hold its leaders accountable. In countries where leaders go to jail after their tenure, nobody harbours a foolish nostalgic memory of their tenure. If Nigeria had gone beyond the many televised probes that attended the end of the Obasanjo regime and properly held him accountable, we would not be here. When a society fails to develop a proper system of accountability for its public officials, what you will end up with is a crass you-be-thief-I-no-be-thief exchange between its leaders.

Our country is such a funny place. Leaders like Obasanjo will vandalise a government while in power, only for them to suddenly develop acute moral clarity when they return home. Some of them, looking back at the scene of their crimes from the safety of their retirement, will even have the moral gumption to start schooling the rest of us on what we should do with our lives that they systematically diminished through their awful governance. Some of the clowns who spent eight years working for the Buhari administration are now the ones teaching us how to re-arrange our democracy. One of them, who regularly appeared on television to defend Buhari’s awful policies and his role in executing them, now uses that same mouth to advise youths not to japa, urging them to work for the betterment of Nigeria instead. The fellow wants other people’s children to spend the time of their lives repairing what he and his fellow travellers destroyed.

Let us be clear: While Obasanjo’s government was far better than the disasters that have characterised the administrations of Buhari and now, Tinubu, he has not earned the right to be the arbiter of what constitutes either democracy or a well-ordered society. Each time we elevate Obasanjo’s governance record to the standard of democratic accomplishments; we lower the bar of what constitutes viable leadership by six feet. When we talk about leadership standards, what we are talking about is integrity, competence, and efficiency.

We are not talking about jokers for whom Nigerian life is perennially about the management of pain and suffering, confused leaders who embark on reforms without end, necrophiliacs who measure their administrative progress in terms of those who died rather than those who live. No, what we mean is a leader who succeeds in providing infrastructure for various aspects of our lives such that we have access to high-quality education, modern health facilities, security, regular energy supply, clean air and water, and even a well-preserved ecosystem. We are talking about a leadership that provides a conducive environment where industries can thrive, and its citizens too can flourish. Neither Obasanjo nor Tinubu represents that ideal.