More criticisms have come the way of former
president Olusegun Obasanjo over his letter where
he chastised President Muhammadu Buhari and
his administration, claiming the president was
preparing to rig the 2019 poll.
In his response to the letter on Tuesday, former
Lagos governor and Co-Chair of the All
Progressives Congress Presidential Campaigns,
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, said Obasanjo was
projecting unto the APC the misconduct he would
perpetrate if still in power.
“Yet, the ways of Obasanjo are not those of the
APC. And this difference has meant the better for
Nigeria,†Tinubu said in the strongly-worded
letter.
Asiwaju described the former president as an
election rigger without peer.
“There is no election which occurred under
Obasanjo’s watch or in which he participated that
did not involve cheating on his part. Even the late
President Umaru Musa Yar ‘Adua admitted he
was the beneficiary of a flawed election
engineered by none other than today’s vociferous
complainant,†he said.
Tinubu’s riposte personally signed by him, titled
“CHIEF OBASANJO – AT WAR AGAINST HIS OWN
DEEDSâ€, reads: “Former President Obasanjo is
many things to many people; but he is all things
unto himself. His recent contribution to our
political discourse wherein he alleges plots to
steer the coming elections shows he benefits from
an exceedingly faulty memory, is purely
shameless or has a most wicked sense of humor.
Perhaps all three are facets of his makeup and
were equally on display in his latest prosaic
display.
“The crux of his long tirade was the allegation
that INEC is poised to cook the election results.
Chief Obasanjo should not get his dander up and
waste good ink for nothing. This election will be a
free and open exercise of the people’s right to
choose their leaders. Obasanjo makes fiery
allegations against this right but offers no
corroborating evidence; he presents only reams of
words. This is because Obasanjo is projecting
onto the APC the misconduct he would wrought if
still in power. Yet, the ways of Obasanjo are not
those of the APC. And this difference has meant
the better for Nigeria.
“Moreover, Chief Obasanjo should be the last to
complain about election rigging. His
administration was an unalloyed miscarriage of
justice and of the best aspirations of the Nigerian
people. We all know he was not elected in 1999.
He was handed Nigeria on a silver platter;
perhaps because Nigeria was so easily given that
he went about treating the nation as if it was a
less than precious thing; he thought it was a
cheap give-away not a privilege to govern this
nation.
“This man should have positioned himself to be
the father of the nation. All the goodwill that
could be granted a political figure was bestowed
on him. The global economy was such that it
fueled our growth. Everyone wanted Nigeria to
succeed after emerging from years of noxious
military rule. Despite the flawed exercise that
rendered him president, we all bit our tongues in
hope that he would say and do the right things
that would move Nigeria forward.
“Instead of being a unifying figure as
Commander-in-chief, he lowered himself to being
a divisive, vindictive conniver. There was no table
which he neared that he did not upset and
overturn. There was no one who came into his
company for any period of time with whom he did
not fall out if he expresses a thought contrary to
one of his.
“He tried to convert our young democracy into a
one party state. His PDP boasted that they would
rule for 60 uninterrupted years. Never did they
boast that they would govern us well during even
one year of the sixty. He could have placed the
economy on the path to durable growth and
shared prosperity through diversification,
industrialization and creation of a social safety
net for the poor. Instead, he handed the economy
over to a tight group of cronies, turning what
should be a modern economy into a version of the
mammoth trading companies that dominated the
17th and 18th century. The Transcorp
conglomerate was intended to be a throwback to
monopolistic enterprises such as the East Indian
Company wherein a select handful would control
the national economy’s strategic heights.
“We hoped that Obasanjo would personify
statesmanship, thus showing the way to a more
benign political culture. Instead, he bickered and
feuded with his vice president and mostly anyone
who dared remind him that he was human and
thus infallible.
“Given the vast margin between the good he
could have achieved and the nebulous feats that
comprise his true record, Chief Obasanjo is the
person most responsible for the flaws in the
Nigerian political economy since 1999. His ego is
as expansive as the firmament but his good
deeds would fit into a modest sachet with ample
room to spare.
“The worst of Obasanjo’s record, I have yet to
describe. When it comes to elections, he has been
a rigger without peer. There is no election which
occurred under Obasanjo’s watch or in which he
participated that did not involve cheating on his
part. Even the late President Umaru Musa Yar
‘Adua admitted he was the beneficiary of a flawed
election engineered by none other than today’s
vociferous complainant. For Obasanjo to lament
over electoral malpractice is tantamount to the
ocean complaining that a few raindrops are
causing it to get wet.
“In his writing, Obasanjo alleges the Osun election
indicates rigging will take place in the coming
contests. Let’s go straight to the truth, Obasanjo
has no grievance with the process. His personal
history suggests fair process is the least of his
concerns. What knocks Obasanjo off kilter is that
he could not dictate the result in Osun. He told
those in the PDP that he held sway in Osun and
throughout the Southwest. They believed him. He
led them to defeat notwithstanding the almost
impossible voter turnout in PDP strongholds in
that state. Obasanjo can only win an election
when has the final say over the final vote tally.
Otherwise, he is a troubled man.
“In an attempt to relieve his trouble, Chief
Obasanjo makes reference to a joke about INEC.
He says, “The INEC was asked if the Commission
was ready for the election and if it expects the
election to be free, fair and credible. The INEC
man is reported as saying in response, ‘we are
ready with everything including the results.’†The
joke has a touch of humor; we are glad that
Obasanjo is not completely devoid of this most
human of traits. However, he makes a telling
omission by failing to give you the vintage of this
bit of sarcasm.
“The jest was not born last week. It’s vintage is
circa 2003- a time when a certain President
Obasanjo rode roughshod over INEC. He would
summon the nervous INEC chairman to the Villa,
proceeding to hector the man until he gave way
to Obasanjo’s demands. At Obasanjo’s urging,
INEC improperly published fake election results on
the gubernatorial race in Lagos. Not until a public
outcry did INEC back away from rigging Lagos. A
similar attempt was made in Lagos in 2007. In
essence, for Obasanjo to laugh at this joke means
he has belatedly developed the ability to laugh at
himself.
“If Obasanjo was so committed to free elections,
how could he countenance Atiku’s recent boast of
single-handedly rigging elections in the
Southwest. Atiku claimed that he took all states
for the PDP but left Lagos alone due to some
misguided affinity for me. By this statement, Atiku
publicly admitted to rigged elections in the SW.
Beyond resort to wholesale rigging, Atiku could
never deign to be more popular and potent in the
Southwest than the panoply of good and decent
leaders that guided the defunct AC. Moreover, I
can assure you that we did not need Atiku’s false
beneficence to win the elections in Lagos. The
people voted for us and their votes countered the
ill-designs Obasanjo and Atiku set in motion.
Thus, if Obasanjo cannot chastise Atiku for
publicly boasting that he rigged elections, then
Obasanjo’s display of righteous indignation is but
a magician’s trick.
“His fine words and sentiments come a dozen
years too late. These noble things would have
greater effect had he placed them into practice
when he was at the helm of affairs. At that time,
he was powerful so he did as he might. Now that
he lacks power, he has taken to preach that
which he never did.
“In his commentary, he mentions that INEC has a
record of past rigging. I wonder if he understands
the admission he makes. No other president has
exercised such tight control over INEC for as
many years as Obasanjo. No president has had
the domineering relationship with INEC that
Obasanjo enjoyed. If there are reports of past
INEC rigging, those reports are of Obasanjo’s
making. It is the irony of ironies for Obasanjo to
complain of the fruit on the table when his was
the hand that planted the tree.
“Chief Obasanjo tries to further confuse matters
by pointing to the case of the CJN’s assets
declaration as evidence of future vote-rigging via
tampering with the judiciary. Again, Obasanjo
goes into a personality shift. For years, Obasanjo
has boasted of himself as our corruption fighter
nonpareil. The very aim of this current letter is to
attack imagined INEC malfeasance. Yet, with
regard to the CJN, he blithely ignores the large
cache of dollars in the CJN’s account and the
millions of dollars that passed through the
accounts. Obasanjo seems unbothered by the
unexplained presence of such sums. Perhaps
Obasanjo’s nonchalance regarding the money is
that he expected the funds there because he
knows both the origin and reasons for the trove.
“Chief Obasanjo sinks so low as to suggest that
the VP, during the exercise of his official duties,
was taking the PVC numbers of market women
and traders. This statement reveals the bilious
nature of the man. Obasanjo even quotes the
notorious Bode George in claiming that the VP
was “gutting our collective treasury†by giving
loans of N10,000 to market women under the
administration’s empowerment programs.
“What? Giving money to poor people to enhance
their lives and escape the maw of poverty is, by
PDP metrics, gutting the collective treasury. If
helping the poor is gutting the treasury, Atiku’s
privatizing large chunks of the economy into his
own pocket must have been seen by the PDP as
a vital public service. Jonathan and his Petroleum
Minister’s siphoning government coffers of several
billion dollars to enrich the already-rich must
have been viewed by the PDP as the epitome of a
social safety net. Obasanjo’s and the PDP’s
disdain for the common person could not be
clearer.
“Obasanjo should be ashamed to even raise this
issue. When he was president, the economy was
on an easy sledding due to positive global trends.
Obasanjo did not raise a finger to do anything for
the poor. He and Atiku were champions of trickle-
down economics. If anything good trickled down
to the poor it was by accident. Obasanjo left the
poor unattended because he cared nothing for
them. Poverty increased under his cold
indifference. Not one meaningful social program
was established during his watch. The banking
and pension deregulation he brought were geared
to profit the wealthy CEO’s and managers of
these financial entities. The malpractices
attendant to these deregulation fiascos
extinguished the savings of millions of Nigerians.
In reliance on these artifices of Obasanjo and his
ilk, many Nigerians were thrust down the lower
rungs of the poverty they so desperately sought
to avoid. Obasanjo’s allies gobbled the savings of
the poor and still feast on them to this day.
“Chief Obasanjo is one of the last people to
preach to anyone about using public funds to care
for the poor. He had the gall to fret that funds
should not be given to the urban poor because
they are not poor enough. But his grouse does
not show any defect in the administration’s
program. His complaint shows the defect in
Obasanjo’s humanity or lack of it. To complain
that some people are not poor enough for his
liking is to reveal that seeing human suffering
does not motivate him to cure it. He would rather
that people suffer it the more. Your unease and
distress becomes his entertainment or at least
evidence he is superior to the common man.
Watching a laborer struggle against penury is no
more than a spectator sport for Obasanjo.
“The most fantastic of all his claims is that this
administration has returned Nigeria to the days of
Abacha. If this were true, the press would be
constantly closed. Obasanjo would be constricted
in writing such letters. Elections would not be
upon us. Atiku would not be able to freely
campaign and the diversity of opinion in the
public space would be suppressed.
“For Obasanjo to utter such an outrage is that he
hopes lighting strikes twice. He was ushered into
office after Abacha’s demise. He thinks if he can
invoke Abacha’s name, the same thing will
happen again. By hook, crook or utter fantasy,
Obasanjo seeks to return to Aso Villa, not as an
irritating, importuning guest but as a long-term
resident. He wants to be back in control. If he
cannot be president, then the president better
carve from his office a special room for Obasanjo.
“Obasanjo thinks he is more than the greatest
Nigerian. He thinks himself greater than Nigeria
itself. Unless he is allowed to lead the procession,
he will groan, grouse and grit. However, neither
President Buhari nor the progressive APC have
much use for his reactionary policies and his
megalomaniac ways. Thus, we shall be forced to
endure more of his letters. But enduring such
missives is vastly superior and small price to pay
for not having to endure a repeat of his
unenlightened misgovernanceâ€.
Source:
dailypost.ng/2019/01/22/tinubu-bombs-
obasanjo-attack-buhari-apc-makes-revelations-
full-statement/
