Israel Umoh
Former Nigerian military President, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida says he has respect for ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo over the endorsement of Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate for the 2023 polls.
Babangida popularly known as IBB was a military President from 1985–1993 while Obasanjo ruled from 1976 to 1979 as Head of State and from 1999 to 2007 as democratically elected President.
In his Twitter handle on January 2, Babangida wrote ‘‘Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo will forever be a true elder statesman and a boss in the military. No serving General in the Nigerian Army today joined the military earlier than 1982. By then, Obasanjo had already finished his military career. I respect him a lot, with his endorsement.’’
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Obasanjo had on Sunday endorsed the Labour Party standard bearer, saying he had an edge over other presidential candidates in terms of knowledge, discipline, vitality and character.
The elder statesman, therefore, called on Nigerians to vote for the LP standard bearer in the February 25 presidential polls.
But, his endorsement attracted angry reactions from the Presidency, All Progressives Congress, and the Peoples Democratic Party, describing his support for Obi as worthless.
Obasanjo’s government, corrupt
The Presidency on Monday slammed Obasanjo for describing the seven years of the President Muhammadu Buhari in office as horrible and hell on earth for Nigerians.
It described Obasanjo’s government as corrupt, adding that the former leader was morally bankrupt.
The Presidency, which listed Obasanjo’s sins in office, also accused him of lying to the South-East to garner votes during his tenure between 1999 and 2007.
The elder statesman stirred the hornet’s nest on Sunday with his criticism of the Buhari regime, noting that the nation was currently faced with pervasive and mind-numbing insecurity, rudderless leadership, mismanagement of diversity and pervasive corruption and bad economic policies, which he said had resulted in extremes of poverty and massive unemployment and galloping inflation.
But responding to the blistering attacks on Buhari in a statement on Monday, the Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media & Publicity), Garba Shehu said the Owu chief “won’t stop being jealous of anyone who beats him to a new record in the nation’s development process,’’ noting that Buhari is ahead of Obasanjo in all fields of national development.
This, he said, is a cardinal sin to the ex-president.
In the statement titled, ‘Morally squalid Obasanjo attacks leaders out of frustration,’ Shehu said, “Former President Obasanjo is so well known to all that no one needs to describe who he is. But four things we will like to say: One is that he will not stop attacking President Muhammadu Buhari because the former President won’t stop being jealous of anyone who beats him to a new record in the nation’s development process.
“President Buhari is ahead of Chief Obasanjo in all fields of national development and to do that is a cardinal sin to Obasanjo, whose hallucinations tell him that he is the best ever to lead Nigeria and there will never be another one better than him.
“President Buhari just completed the world-class edifice that is the Second Niger Bridge after three decades of failed promises. It is now awaiting commissioning. Obasanjo laid the sod for the bridge in his first term as elected President and work never started.
“When he sought re-election for his second term in office, he returned to the site to turn the sod for the bridge the second time. When the Obi of Onitsha, forthright and scholarly, reminded him that he had done this in the past, Obasanjo told the foremost South-East traditional ruler that he was a liar, in the full presence of the chiefs and oracles in his palace.’’
The presidential aide said the former President failed to build the Second Niger Bridge despite turning the sod twice.
“Obasanjo lied to the South-East to get their votes. President Buhari didn’t get their votes but built the bridge because he believed it is the right thing to do,’’ Garba declared.
Two terms
The SSA further bragged that his principal had bagged several awards and encomiums for not attempting to go beyond the maximum two terms in office as stipulated by the Constitution.
He said, “President Buhari has been stating and restating that he will supervise a better election than the one that brought him to office and to leave as and when due. Having tried tenure elongation and failed, Obasanjo’s fictitious mind must be telling him that he is the one under attack.
“But he is not on President Buhari’s radar because experience has shown, especially lately in West Africa where there have been at least three successful coups and many other failed attempts, that third term or tenure elongation is a recipe for political instability.
“Furthermore, the totality of African leaders appointed President Buhari the Anti-Corruption Champion of the continent. You can’t be an anti-corruption champion if ‘you meddled and bent the rules,’ carrying the putrid responsibility of what happened to national assets in the name of privatisation as documented by the Nigerian Senate in 2011.’’
Under the Obasanjo administration, the Presidency alleged that the Aluminum Smelter Company of Nigeria and Delta Steel were undervalued and sold well below their market prices.
“As an insight, the Aluminum Smelter Company of Nigeria, which was set up with $3.2bn, was sold to a Russian firm, Russal, for a paltry $130m. Delta Steel, which was set up in 2005, at a cost of $1.5bn, was sold to Global Infrastructure for just $30m. ALSCON got back $120m for the dredging of the Imo River, which was never carried out,’’ the statement added.
Touting Buhari’s profile as ‘the Champion of Democracy’ not only in Nigeria but across the African continent, the Presidency castigated Obasanjo for allegedly destabilising internal democracy “by orchestrating impeachment after impeachment of governors who were not compliant with his highly imperial administration.’’
It stated, “As we said sometime back, Mr Obasanjo’s tenure, 1999-2007, represented the dark days of Nigeria’s democracy due to a slew of assaults on the constitution.
“The former president deployed federal machinery to remove governors Joshua Dariye, Rashidi Ladoja, Peter Obi, Chris Ngige and Ayo Fayose from office. They were the then governors of Plateau, Oyo, Anambra, Anambra and Ekiti states, respectively, unjustly removed using the police and secret service under his control.
“Under him, a five-man legislature met at 6 am and ‘impeached’ Governor Dariye in Plateau; 18 members out of 32 removed Governor Ladoja of Oyo from office; in Anambra, APGA’s Governor Obi was equally impeached at 5:00 a.m. by members who did not meet the two-thirds required by the constitution.
“Lawmaking powers of the Rivers State legislature were transferred to the federal parliament to punish Governor Amaechi for shifting his political alliance.
“Moreover, he damned the Supreme Court and unlawfully held back Lagos State revenues due from federal sources on account of his pettiness against Governor Bola Tinubu.
“On the other hand, in Washington a few weeks ago, the US President Joe Biden at a meeting with African Heads of States and Government, described President Buhari as a champion of democracy and role model for the leaders of African states. Clearly, Obasanjo has become even more jealous by adopting a vengeful attitude.’’
Joining the attacks on the Octogenarian, the Adviser, Media, Communications and Public Affairs of the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Dele Alake, claimed the ex-president has no moral compass to lecture any citizen on leadership “with his notorious antecedents in Nigeria’s political history.’’
He said Obasanjo might be plotting for an interim government, adding that the ex-president was a hypocrite.
While describing the former head of state’s open endorsement as preposterous, Alake also blamed him for the abolition of history from the school curriculum.
He said, “It is laughable that Obasanjo has the temerity to deem himself qualified to lecture Nigerians on who to elect as a leader. Throughout his political trajectory in public life, he has unfailingly demonstrated gross incompetence in this regard.
“In 1979, his military regime was designed to produce the weakest leadership in a political terrain that had such proven leadership talents as Adamu Ciroma, Aminu Kano, Maitama Sule, Waziri Ibrahim, Nnamdi Azikiwe or Obafemi Awolowo, among others.
“In 2007, after his two-term tenure and the failure of his third term agenda, he influenced the emergence of two PDP successors who failed partly because of the weak institutional foundation he had laid and partly because of their own limitations.
“In endorsing Obi, Obasanjo resorted to verbose and nebulous generalities without telling Nigerians in concrete terms what were his preferred candidate’s track record of performance as governor in Anambra state.”
In the statement entitled, ‘My Appeal To All Nigerians, Particularly Young Nigerians,’ the former Lagos State commissioner for information and strategy berated Obasanjo for plumbing what he called ‘new depth in hubris and hypocrisy never seen in all his career as ‘political busybody.’
The APC PCC media adviser said the former president sees Nigeria as a movie where only he is the all-conquering hero while others are doomed villains.
‘Endorsement worthless’
Responding to Obasanjo’s lengthy message, the Director, Media and Publicity, APC Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, said Tinubu, would not lose sleep over the endorsement of his Labour Party counterpart by the former president.
Onanuga, in a statement on Sunday, described the endorsement as worthless, adding that Obasanjo was a paperweight with no political goodwill or leverage anywhere in Nigeria to make anyone win a councillorship election let alone a presidential election.
The statement read, “We read with amusement the endorsement of Mr Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate by former president Olusegun Obasanjo in his New Year message on Sunday.
“Following calls by journalists from various media houses who asked for our reaction, we decided to make this preliminary statement, though we didn’t consider the so-called endorsement to be of any value.
“We respect the democratic right of former President Obasanjo to support and endorse any candidate of his choice in any election. Except that he made it known formally in his New Year message, any discerning political watcher in Nigeria knows that Chief Obasanjo’s preference for Peter Obi is expected.
“He had earlier stated his position at various public events, the last being at the 70th birthday anniversary of Chief John Nwodo, former President of Ohanaeze Ndigbo in Enugu.
“We make bold to say that our party and candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will not lose sleep over Obasanjo’s move, as Obasanjo is notorious for always opposing progressive political forces, as he did against MKO Abiola in 1993.
“The endorsement is worthless because the former president does not possess any political goodwill or leverage anywhere in Nigeria to make anyone win a councillorship election, let alone a presidential election. He is a political paperweight. He is also not a democrat anyone should be proud to be associated with.’’
Onanuga alleged that while in power, Obasanjo in 2003 and 2007 used the coercive instruments of state at his disposal to railroad people into elective offices against the will of Nigerians as expressed at the polls.
“In 2007, he declared the polls a do-or-die affair after he failed in his bid to amend our constitution to have a third term. From our records, former president Obasanjo has not successfully made anyone win an election in Nigeria since then. Not even in Ogun State can anyone rely on his support or endorsement to become a governor or councillor,’’ he contended.
Expressing pity for Obi, Onanuga said the APC is confident that Obasanjo cannot win his polling unit and ward in Abeokuta for the LP candidate in the coming presidential election.
Obasanjo is ‘meddlesome interloper’
The spokesman of the Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Council, Daniel Bwala, has labelled former President Olusegun Obasanjo as a “meddlesome interloper,” who is striving to force a puppet on Nigerians.
Bwala made the allegation when he appeared on Politics Today, a popular programme on Channels Television on Monday.
Obasanjo had stirred the hornet nest in his New Year’s message when he openly endorsed that former Anambra State governor and Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi, in the letter.
But Bwala, who spoke from his London location, accused Obasanjo of being the only one of five surviving past leaders meddling in the affairs of the country.
He also believed that the ex-president’s allusion to Obi as a needle with thread was disrespectful and reeked of an attempt to foist a puppet on the country.
He said, “There are quite a number of things in Obasanjo’s letter that cannot be argued like the APC rule. I agreed with him that the last eight years of the APC have been perilous. It is a period Nigerians would pray not to have a repeat. This is the reason I believe Nigerians will not vote for the APC again.
“But the part of his letter that I think is wrong was in the last four paragraphs where he identified Peter Obi as a needle with thread and can easily be controlled when he goes wrong. That is where we know Obasanjo is in search of a third term by proxy. What he is saying is that Peter Obi is a puppet.
“Obasanjo, to my greatest respect, lacks the moral attitude to become the father of the nation. There are about five former presidents alive today. None of them interferes with the country like a meddling interloper like President Obasanjo.
“If you look at the letter, it is all about me, mine and I. He rated his own administration from 1999 to 2007 as impeccable but could not find any element of praise for any administration after him. In other words, Obasanjo believes that he has the celestial power to predict the future and leadership of Nigeria. That attitude is antithetical to Nigeria’s democracy.
“Obasanjo thinks that democracy is as defined by him. To begin with, whether he has weight or electoral value, you remember that as soon as he was brought out of prison in 1998, a former governor from the South East said Obasanjo does not even have N200,000 to buy his nomination form hence they bought for him.
“Today, he has Obasanjo farm in Ota, presidential library and Ota farm supplies not only to Nigeria but to the rest of Africa. He did not even win his polling unit in 1999. Therefore, if you look at it from the evidence of value, he does not even have the moral to call the presidential candidate of any party as someone he can direct.”
Obasanjo justified
However, rising to the defence of the ex-General, the Spokesman for the Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council, Yunusa Tanko, said he found the barrage of attacks from the APC and PDP ridiculous because the two parties had been chasing Obasanjo for endorsement in the last three months.
He said, “If Obasanjo has no electoral value, why are they all running after him? Why did ‘Emi lo kan’ and Atiku, who he has always been accused of corruption, visit him?
“The truth is that Obasanjo appeals a lot to the largest demography in our electoral system, which is the Nigerian youth. The former president also said it clearly that the letter he wrote to the Nigerian people was specifically directed to the youth, saying it is their time now to decide. He wanted them to take the bull by the horn and fight for their survival as a people.
“That’s why they are all jittery. For the first time, that particular demography is now coming into recognition and as a determinant factor in who becomes the president of Nigeria.
“Obasanjo also used the opportunity to give a pass mark to Obi using the narrative of track record, vision, character and physical attributes that none of them, except Obi, has. One is a tax collector; the other has stolen Nigeria’s properties for himself and his family.”
Tanko’s view was also shared by the National Secretary of the Labour Party, Umar Farouk, who described the ex-president as an international figure who is respected globally.
According to him, Obasanjo has never hidden his disgust for the APC presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, and his counterpart in the PDP, Atiku Abubakar.
He added, “Expectedly, President Obasanjo is someone who is known to be an advocate of peace and a nation-builder. He has indeed proven to the world and the international community that our presidential candidate is one of the best.
