Obasanjo Expresses Disappointment in Buhari's Government, Urges the President not to Re-run in 2019

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Tuesday, in a blistering and excoriating 13-page statement has called on President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek re-election in 2019.Obasanjo, in a special press statement entitled, “The Wat Out: A Clarion Call for Coalition for Nigeria Movement” said; Buhari has performed far below expectation and should honorably “dismount from the horse” to join the league of the country’s former leaders whose “experience, influence, wisdom and outreach can be deployed on the side line for the good of the country.”

He also expressed his disappointment in Buhari, whom he supported during the 2015 election over then incumbent and candidate of his former party, Goodluck Jonathan.

In December 2013, Obasanjo wrote an open condemnatory letter to Jonathan, which he titled “Before it is Too Late” where he highlighted the numerous failings of the Jonathan’s administration.

He argued that; his decision to go against Jonathan, at the time was the right one as events in the last three years have since proved, was for the good of the nation and nothing personal.

“Even the horse rider then, with whom I maintain very cordial, happy and social relationship today has come to realize his mistakes and regretted it publicly and I admire his courage and forthrightness in this regard,” Obasanjo said.

He also added that; “He (Jonathan) has a role to play on the side line for the good of Nigeria, Africa and humanity and I will see him as a partner in playing such a role nationally and internationally, but not as a horse rider in Nigeria again.”

Likening the state of the nation to lice-invested clothes, he said the country’s fingernails is stained with blood as it tries to kill the lice by pressing them in-between two fingernails. According to him, in other to make sure that our fingernails remains blood-free we must do what it takes to rid our clothes of lice.

“The lice of poor performance in government – poverty, insecurity, poor economic management, nepotism, gross dereliction of duty, condonation of misdeed – if not outright encouragement of it, lack of progress and hope for the future, lack of national cohesion and poor management of internal political dynamics and widening inequality – are very much with us today,” he wrote.

“With such lice of general and specific poor performance and crying poverty with us, our fingers will not be dry of ‘blood’,” he added.

While thanking Buhari for the effort of his administration in rolling back the Boko Haram insurgency and his fight against corruption, Obasanjo said Buhari has ultimately failed in other areas where he had thought he would be efficient.

The octogenarian, who bagged a PhD over the weekend, admitted he knew Buhari was weak in handling the economy, he went ahead and voted for him because at the time “it was a matter of ‘any option but not Jonathan” and because he thought Buhari would appoint qualified Nigerians to help out in that area.

He slammed Buhari for turning a blind eye to corruption within his government saying it amounted to condonation and cover-up saying; “whoever is going to justice must be with clean hands.”

He also berated Buhari for allowing the clashes between herdsmen and farmers to go “sour” and messy saying the endorsement of the President by some governors to seek re-election barely 24 hours after 73 people who were killed by herdsmen in Benue State were given mass burial was “a sad symptom of insensitivity and callousness.”

But Obasanjo reserved his harshest words for what he described as Buhari’s clannishness, lack of understanding of the dynamics of politics, and his tendencies to pass the buck of his government’s inadequacies to the immediate past administration. Source: premiumtimes.ng