In the Reverend Samuel Johnson's great History of the Yorubas, the most dramatic incident concerned the Basorun Gaha, the senior chief of the Oyo kingdom in the mid eighteenth century, who ‘was noted for having raised five Kings to the throne, of whom he murdered four, and was himself murdered by the fifth.’ ‘He was credited’, Johnson wrote, ‘with the power of being able to convert himself into a leopard or an elephant, and on this account was much feared. He lived to a good old age, and wielded his power mercilessly.’ At the last, however, the King of Oyo raised the country against him. As his enemies closed in, ‘Gaha in vain tried to transform himself into an elephant as of yore.’ But he was too old and feeble, so they took him and killed him.

When Obasanjo left office in May 2007, he too needed to turn himself into an elephant, to thicken his skin and prepare to defend himself. He well knew that Nigerians who had shouted ‘hosanna’ to the saviour of the moment would cry ‘crucify’ when he fell. He had cried it himself at General Gowon thirty years before. ‘The best attitude to the pull him down syndrome’, he had counselled in 1990, ‘is caution with consistency in performance and believing in the dictum “the hatred of the high is the involuntary homage of the low”.’ Now he needed his own lofty advice. An occasional ally rallied to him. The astute Jubril Aminu called to congratulate him on his ‘very smooth transfer of power’ to Yar'Adua.