Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on
Monday called on President Muhammadu Buhari to stop giving Nigerians
excuses, adding that the attitude was why he had not achieved results.
The former President advised Buhari to buckle down, saying he was presently a failure.
He spoke at the Olusegun Obasanjo
Presidential Library, Abeokuta, Ogun State, while playing host to the
New Nigeria 2019 Group, led by the convener, Chima Anyaso, in company
with Moses Siasia.
As he did in the open letter he wrote
about three months ago to the President, Obasanjo accused Buhari and the
All Progressives Congress of bringing hardship on Nigerians and running
ineffective economic policies which had crippled businesses.
He noted that it was uncharitable for
the President and his party to continue to whine about challenges almost
three years in office, while they had failed to solve the challenges.
“As I said, stop giving excuses; we met
challenges. If there are no challenges, then we wouldn’t need you to
come. You come in because you know there are challenges and then giving
us an excuse that you have many challenges; that is why you haven’t
achieved results.”
Obasanjo warned Nigerians not to
re-elect a failed government who always gave one excuse or another for
its failure to meet up with Nigerians’ expectations.
He said it would be foolhardy for
Nigerians to reinforce failure by re-electing an ineffective and
incompetent government in 2019.
“And then you still want to go. The
first lesson I learnt in my military training is never reinforce
failure. What we have now is failure. Never you reinforce failure. Let
failure be failure,” he added.
The former President also criticized the
Peoples Democratic Party, urging Nigerians not to be deceived by its
apology, arguing that neither the PDP nor the APC could get Nigeria out
of its economic mess.
He said all hands must be on deck to
mobilise the grassroots and enthrone the kind of government that would
take the country to its promised land.
He said, “The truth is this: When you
have an ineffective and incompetent government, we are all victims. And
don’t let anybody deceive you. Those of you who are in business, your
business could have been better today if we have a competent and
effective and performing government.
“…And if you do not see what you should
see, you will then be a victim of what you don’t like because it is only
when you see what you should see and you do what you should do that you
put away what you do not like.
“But this time, for us to make it, we
need all hands on deck. You see, I have publicly said and I mean it that
as a party, neither PDP nor APC can get us there… never mind about
reforms and apology and all that.”
Obasanjo advised the group not to take
anything for granted, as there was work to be done. He urged his
visitors to be wary of power mongers who might want to divide them using
religion, and tribe among others.
He said, “I am happy to meet with you,
but don’t take anything for granted. There will be a lot of work that we
have to do. What those I call power addicts would want to do is to
divide you based on gender, age, tribe, religion and region.
“You have one commonality – interest of Nigeria. And it doesn’t matter where you come from.”
Obasanjo said he believed in a
grass-roots movement, adding that Nigeria had never really had any
political party with grass-roots flavour.
He said, “I asked one of the foundation
members of the PDP; the PDP when we started, was it a grass-roots party?
He said it was an elitist party.
“Really, we have never had a grass-roots
party. Even NEPU (Northern Elements Progressive Union) which we could
say is the nearest was not grass roots enough.
“And I believe strongly that we must
have a strong popular grass-roots movement to bring about the change,
sustainability and stability that we need in our democracy and
development.
He told the New Nigeria 2019 Group,
backed by Nigerian Young Professionals Forum, to look closely at the
existing political parties, especially APC and PDP as some members still
had integrity and could still assist the movement to succeed.
Obasanjo also urged them to work with
other movements in actualising their goals, not leaving out his
Coalition for Nigeria Movement.
He said, “But let us bring together all
these movements because we are pursuing the same thing. If we allow
ourselves to be taken piecemeal, it is finished.
“… Yes, I said you cannot take the PDP as it is and APC as it is; but they are not all made of evil people.
“There are good people. I said the PDP
is leprous hand, APC is leprous hand, but there are some clean fingers
in them. So, let us take those clean fingers in them and graft the clean
fingers onto our own.
“That is the way to go and if we go that
way, we will get there, we will move together and we will move fast and
we will move far.”
We won’t take issue with Obasanjo – Presidency
The Presidency on Monday said President
Muhammadu Buhari would not take issue with former President Olusegun
Obasanjo over his comment.
The Special Adviser to the President on
Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, said this in an interview
monitored on Channels Television.
Adesina said Buhari would not engage Obasanjo who was his senior in the military.
The presidential spokesman, however,
said since Obasanjo did not say anything different from what was
contained in a letter he released on the administration recently, the
response provided by the Federal Government then was still relevant.
He said, “President Muhammadu Buhari
will not take issue with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. One,
President Obasanjo was his superior in the military.
“President Buhari was made a minister under him during the military regime. So, President Buhari will never take issue with him.
“Two, what President Obasanjo has just
said is not different from what he said in his letter of January 23; and
adequate response was given to that letter by the Minister of
Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
“So, the response the minister gave to that letter suffices to whatever President Obasanjo has just said.”
When contacted on the telephone, the
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba
Shehu, also said he would not make a comment on the matter.
Buhari’s integrity no longer sellable, says Fayose
The Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele
Fayose, has said Buhari is presiding over the most corrupt government in
the history of Nigeria and protecting looters of the country’s
commonwealth.
He said Nigerians had seen through his deceit and would no longer buy the “fake image of integrity they were trying to sell.”
Citing the Transparency International’s
Corruption Perceptions Index, which indicated that corruption had become
more endemic in Nigeria than it was in the last 16 years, Fayose said
any honourable government would have stopped using its fight against
corruption as its major achievement.
He stated that the released names of people that were still on trial as looters was a cover-up for the government’s failure.
He argued that the first list of alleged
looters released by the government was politically motivated while the
second one was an afterthought that was done to cover the shame of the
government because Nigerians questioned the first list.
Fayose, in a statement on Monday by his
Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka,
reiterated that Nigerians were more interested in their welfare,
security of their lives and physical development of the country than
tales of concocted lists of corrupt Nigerians, who were only corrupt in
the estimation of the government because they did not belong to the
ruling All Progressives Congress.
He said, “The Peoples Democratic Party
never pretended to Nigerians that it had corrupt people in its fold and
the party never protected them. Today, the party has gone ahead to
offload the corrupt elements to the APC and they were not only accepted
gladly into the party, they were given prominent appointments by the
President.
“For any list of alleged looters to be
credible, the President, who is protecting looters, should be number one
while those looters in his government should follow.
“His nomination form was bought with
proceeds of corruption and those who bought the form and financed his
election were paid back with the return of all their seized property,
ministerial appointments and even disappearance of prosecution witnesses
in the EFCC cases.”
According to Fayose, a government that
reinstated and promoted a former chairman of Presidential Task Force on
Pension Reform, Abdullahi Maina, who was declared wanted for corrupt
practices by the International Police Organisation and dismissed in 2013
for alleged N2.1bn pension fraud and used the APC broom to sweep the
$25bn contracts scam in the NNPC under the carpet is nothing but a
government of plunderers “and that is the clear definition of Buhari’s
government.”
He added, “It was in this same
government that the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, suspended the
National Health Insurance Scheme Executive Secretary, Professor Usman
Yusuf, for alleged corruption and the President recalled him even
without the knowledge of the Minister.
“Up till today, nothing has happened to
the probe panel on the alleged N500m bribery said to have been paid to
the President’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, by officials of the MTN to
influence government to discontinue its hard stance on the $5bn fine
imposed on the company.
“Therefore, no matter how hard they try
now, they can no longer hoodwink Nigerians with their deceit of fight
against corruption.
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