Nigeria: New Spin Cycle At The Presidential Laundromat
Nigeria’s Comeback Kid, former military dictator and elected president Olusegun Obasanjo continues scheming to gussy up his Presidential Library.
His efforts to scam a major cultural archive away from Nigeria’s Osun State have now attracted a lawsuit fronted by Nobel Laurette Wole Soyinka.
Obasanjo’s place opened earlier this year, but he’s now bringing in the godfather of presidential librarying, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, for a re-do.
The Applebaumers have done all the greats, from the Holocaust Museum to Bill Clinton. But what may serve them best with the Obasanjo account is Applebaum’s work on the “Deng Xiaoping Former Residence Conservation Area.”
Here the dark presidential arts are mobilized to cutesy up Mao’s successor, the father of China’s lurch into capitalism with fascist characteristics. The museum promises to
“vividly and roundly represent the glorious and legendary life of Deng Xiaoping and revive the true history before visitors by reproducing one important historical event after another.“
Climaxing in something called “Howdy, Xiaoping!”
And the inevitable touchstone, some old car loosely associated with the deceased.