By Ola Balogun
The
recent outburst credited to retired General Olusegun Obasanjo on the
occasion of a lecture he is said to have delivered at
Covenant University Otta (Ogun State) on May 14th 2016 regarding the competence
or lack of competence of President Muhammadu Buhari in the areas
of economic policy and foreign affairs visibly represents a gross
indiscretion that deserves to be strongly condemned by all right-thinking
citizens of Nigeria.
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| *Obasanjo and Buhari |
In the first place, it is very unfair that
Obasanjo should take undue advantage of the fact that President Buhari once
served under him in the Nigerian military to make unguarded statements based on
his alleged assessment of Buhari’s characteristics as a military officer. The
people of Nigeria
In the second place, among
all the people in Nigeria
Buhari’s performance in public office.
The fact of the matter is that General Obasanjo hardly achieved
anything worthwhile in the course of his two stints as Nigeria
May 2007. The vast majority of unbiased political commentators agree with the observation that has been made that all through his years in public office as Nigerian Head of State, retired General Obasanjo consistently revealed himself to be an inadequately educated, poorly informed, stubbornly self-opinionated, unpatriotic and thoroughly incompetent ruler.
May 2007. The vast majority of unbiased political commentators agree with the observation that has been made that all through his years in public office as Nigerian Head of State, retired General Obasanjo consistently revealed himself to be an inadequately educated, poorly informed, stubbornly self-opinionated, unpatriotic and thoroughly incompetent ruler.
As the saying goes, the proof of the pudding is in the eating: If
Obasanjo had any meaningful contributions to make to the running of Nigeria
Why didn’t he do so then? It makes absolutely no sense for General
Obasanjo to start pontificating now about what ought to be done or not done by
the current Nigerian President.
Obasanjo has had his turn: What he should now do is to withdraw
peacefully to his farm and his so-called African Leadership Centre in Otta and
allow his successors to implement their own solutions for Nigeria
After all, can
retired General Obasanjo be said to have been successful during his lengthy
cumulative terms of office as Nigeria Nigeria Nigeria
To begin with, he might have been forgiven for having been a
lacklustre successor to General Murtala Mohammed if he had not gone out of his
way during the build up to handing over power to an elected civilian leader to
do all that lay in his power to prevent Chief Obafemi Awolowo from being
elected as Nigerian President, choosing instead to foist a weak, incompetent
and confused leader in the nation in the person of Alhaji Shehu Shagari.
It is entirely symptomatic that in the detailed account of this
sorry episode in Nigeria’s recent history in his carefully researched book
entitled “People, Politics and Politicians of Nigeria 1940-1979 (published by
Heinemann Educational Books), the late Chief Bola Ige had no hesitation in
designating General Olusegun Obasanjo as the real mastermind of the obnoxious
12 two-thirds fraudulent Presidential election formula that was maliciously
concocted by the master political trickster Chief Richard Akinjide, and which
permitted the 1979 Presidential elections to be stolen by a cabal of
reactionary political adventurers led by Obasanjo, who handed the Presidency over
to Alhaji Shehu Shagari, thus setting the stage for Shagari’s disastrous
performance as a do-nothing and know-nothing Nigerian President...
