Nigerian statesman Olusegun Obasanjo’s rejection of liberal democracy is heartfelt—and wrong.  

Why seeming democratic progress has failed to staunch agitation for self-determination in Nigeria.

Against a backdrop of growing calls for ethnically based separatism, including in former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s native Yorubaland, the former president in a speech laid out the arguments for maintaining Nigeria’s unity—though not at any cost. Speaking June 9 in the Yoruba heartland city of Abeokuta, where he lives in retirement, Obasanjo argued that Nigerians will fare better staying together: “it is better for Nigeria to remain as one indivisible nation than for each tribe to go its separate way.”

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote an open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari on the deteriorating security situation in Nigeria. His focus in the letter is on Boko Haram and the “herdsmen/farmers crises."

Chidi Odinkalu and Ayisha Osori have published a book in Nigeria that says Obasanjo and his associates and supporters essentially stole $500 million to fund the incumbent’s efforts to amend the constitution so that he could run for a third term. The authors are both highly credible human rights lawyers.

Party delegate and former president Olusegun Obasanjo attends the presidential primaries of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) in Nigeria's federal capital Abuja January 13, 2011. (Afolabi So…