2019: Anxiety as Obasanjo’s letter to Buhari overheats polity

.Wants Buhari to forget re-election bid, seeks Third Force to take over power

.President holds closed-door meeting with Tinubu, Akande in Aso Rock

In a surprising turn of events, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Tuesday, called on President Muhammadu Buhari to forget any plan, if there is such for a second term bid in 2019, because in his first term, he has performed below expectations.

Obasanjo, in a special press statement entitled, ‘The Way Out: A Clarion Call For Nigeria Movement,’ said because Buhari performed far below expectations, he should honourably “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.”

The former two-term president on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said he feels disappointed by Buhari, whom he supported during the 2015 election over the then incumbent and candidate of his former party, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.

Obasanjo had written an open letter to condemn the Jonathan administration in December 2013 titled “Before it is Too Late” where he highlighted the numerous failings of the Jonathan administration.

He had argued that his decision to go against Jonathan at the time was the right one as events in the last three years had 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 realise his mistakes and regretted it publicly and I admire his courage and forthrightness in this regard,” Obasanjo said.

Likening the state of the nation today to lice-infested clothes, Obasanjo 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 the former president, in order to make sure that our fingernails remain 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, but that he went ahead and voted for him because at the time “it was a matter of ‘any option but Jonathan’ and because he thought Buhari would appoint qualified Nigerians to help out in that area.

“Although, I know that you cannot give what you don’t have and that economy does not obey military order. You have to give it what it takes in the short-, medium- and long-term,” the former president wrote.

He slammed Buhari for turning a blind eye to corruption within his government, saying it amounted to condoning and cover-up, adding that 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 failings in three major areas: 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.

He said, “But there are three other areas where President Buhari has come out more glaringly than most of us thought we knew about him. One is nepotic deployment bordering on clannishness and inability to bring discipline to bear on errant members of his nepotic court. This has grave consequences on performance of his government to the detriment of the nation.

“It would appear that national interest was being sacrificed on the altar of nepotic interest. What does one make of a case like that of Maina: collusion, condonation, ineptitude, incompetence, dereliction of responsibility or kinship and friendship on the part of those who should have taken visible and deterrent disciplinary action? How many similar cases are buried, ignored or covered up and not yet in the glare of the media and the public?

“The second is his poor understanding of the dynamics of internal politics. This has led to wittingly or unwittingly making the nation more divided and inequality has widened and become more pronounced. It also has effect on general national security.

“The third is passing the buck. For instance, blaming the Governor of the Central Bank for devaluation of the naira by 70% or so and blaming past governments for it, is to say the least, not accepting one’s own responsibility.

“Let nobody deceive us, economy feeds on politics and because our politics is depressing, our economy is even more depressing today. If things were good, President Buhari would not need to come in. He was voted to fix things that were bad and not engage in the blame game.”

Obasanjo also argued that neither Buhari nor his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), hold the solution to the country’s problems, suggesting that Buhari was not healthy enough to withstand the rigour associated with running a country like Nigeria, neither is his party capable of providing the answer needed to sail the country through its difficulties.

Read Also: Nigerians should blame themselves for putting too much hope in Buhari -Ojo

Obasanjo therefore advised that Buhari should step down at the end of his first term with honour and dignity and attend to his health and not listen to the “self-serving so-called advisers who would claim that they love him more than God loves him and that without him, there would be no Nigeria.”

“I only appeal to brother Buhari to consider a deserved rest at this point in time and at this age. I continue to wish him robust health to enjoy his retirement from active public service. President Buhari does not necessarily need to heed my advice. But whether or not he heeds it, Nigeria needs to move on and move forward,” he said.

“I have had occasion in the past to say that the two main political parties – APC and PDP – were wobbling. I must reiterate that nothing has happened to convince me otherwise. If anything, I am reinforced in my conviction. The recent show of PDP must give grave and great concern to lovers of Nigeria.

“To claim, as has been credited to the chief kingmaker of PDP, that for procuring the Supreme Court judgement for his faction of the party, he must dictate the tune all the way, this is indeed fraught with danger.

“If neither APC nor PDP is a worthy horse to ride to lead Nigeria at this crucial and critical time, what then do we do? Remember Farooq Kperogi, an Associate Professor at the Kennesaw State University, Georgia, United States, calls it “a cruel Hobson’s choice; it’s like a choice between six and half a dozen, between evil and evil. Any selection or deflection would be a distinction without a difference. We cannot just sit down lamenting and wringing our hands desperately and hopelessly”.

Having ruled out the PDP and the ruling APC of possessing the panacea to the malaise that affects the country, Obasanjo therefore called for a Third Force movement he termed, ‘Coalition of Nigeria’, which he offered to be a part of, to wrest power from the present ruling class and lead the country into the path of rebirth.

He said, “We can collectively save ourselves from the position we find ourselves. It will not come through self-pity, fruitless complaint or protest, but through constructive and positive engagement and collective action for the good of our nation and ourselves and our children and their children. We need moral re-armament and engaging togetherness of people of like-mind and goodwill to come solidly together to lift Nigeria up. This is no time for trading blames or embarking on futile argument and neither should we accept untenable excuses for non-performance.

“Let us accept that the present administration has done what it can do to the limit of its ability, aptitude and understanding. Let the administration and its political party platform agree with the rest of us that what they have done and what they are capable of doing is not good enough for us. They have given as best as they have and as best as they can give.

“Nigeria deserves and urgently needs better than what they have given or what we know they are capable of giving. To ask them to give more will be unrealistic and will only sentence Nigeria to a prison term of four years if not destroy it beyond the possibility of an early recovery and substantial growth.”

When contacted for his reaction over Obasanjo’s advice to Buhari, asking him not to seek re-election in 2019, the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr Femi Adesina, simply said: “No comment”.
But Tuesday’s to the Presidential Villa by two prominent members of the ruling APC, former Lagos State governor and National Leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and former Osun State governor and first chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, has nothing to do with the call by Obasanjo to Buhari not to contest the 2019 election.
The Tinubu Media Office stated this in a statement made available on Tuesday, stating that the visit to the Villa by the two party leaders was scheduled last week. The statement was signed by Tunde Rahman.

The statement reads in part, “President Buhari periodically schedules talks with Asiwaju Tinubu and Baba Akande, as he does with other Nigerians and APC figures, to discuss substantive issues pertaining to the governance of the country and matters concerning the party.

“This visit was one such meeting. As such, the meeting had nothing to do with the statement of former President Obasanjo. It is totally unconnected. At the time of the meeting, Asiwaju Tinubu and Baba Akande were even unaware that Obasanjo had released his statement.”

Also, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described Obasanjo’s advice to Buhari against seeking re-election in 2019 as courageous, timeous and patriotic, adding that such has vindicated its position on Buhari and the APC.

But the PDP rejected the call by Obasanjo for a Third Force, saying that such would amount to repeating the same blunder that brought in the ideologically vacuous APC and the Buhari Presidency, which it claimed has now wrecked havoc on the nation in its almost three years of governance.

The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement on Tuesday, said the fact that Buhari and the APC have irredeemably failed the nation is obvious, adding that Nigerians have already taken an irrevocable position against them ahead of the 2019 elections.

He said, “Chief Obasanjo’s counsel has rekindled the fate of the people in the democratic process, stressing however that the solution does not lie in creating another political quicksand in a third force but consolidating on a rescue mission with the repositioned PDP which Nigerians have already embraced.

“Nigerians would recall that in the heat of 2015 elections, many citizens, who claimed to have become tired of the PDP and its government, opted for a coalition of strange bedfellows who had little or no experience in governance as a vehicle for electoral victory. Expectedly, in their confusion, they have plunged us into this regrettable situation that has brought our nation to its knees.”

The PDP spokesman maintained that repeating the old mistake of congregating political strangers cannot help our nation at this time, more so, when the few concerns raised by the former President about the PDP no longer obtain under the refocused and rebranded PDP.

Ologbondiyan said, “The PDP is now standing on a truly democratic ground that perfectly represents and reflects the hopes and aspirations of all Nigerians irrespective of their class, creed or tribe.

“That is why our great party has now, more than ever before, become a centre of the new patriotic and broad-based engagements by well-meaning Nigerians and coalitions across board, including past leaders, in rekindling our democratic process that places priority on returning power to the people.

“The fact is that Nigerians overrated President Buhari in 2015 but they have now seen that he never possessed the capacity and the required aptitude to effectively govern our great nation and pilot a healthy economy”.

Meanwhile, a Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, has commended Obasanjo for taking the position that he has taken, saying that this was a time to rethink the leadership of the country, as the Buhari administration has failed to deliver on its promises in the last three years.
Speaking through its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, the group said: “Obasanjo has made the right call. This country has foundered in the last two years. From every indices, it has gone worse; from the economy, the NBS said recently that within the period, four million jobs were lost. Look at the rate people are committing suicide in Nigeria, power situation is bad.

“In fact, this government has not completed any project in the last three years, upon all that is the mindless killing of Nigerians by Fulani herdsmen upon which the government is not lifting a finger. The Fulani herdsmen are carrying unnecessary weapons all over the place and the government has not disarmed them, now they are telling us that the killing is being perpetuated by ISIS, even when the Fulani herdsmen are taking responsibilities for the killings.

“We cannot continue with this lethargy in the next four years, we need fresh hands to run an inclusive government.

Also reacting, the Nigeria Intervention Movement (NIM) has commended the political acumen and vision of Obasanjo, who in a most decisive manner called on all Nigerians to immediately join forces for a new Coalition that will rescue the country from the impunity and inertia of the two dominant parties in Nigeria.

In a statement on Tuesday, signed by Mallam Naseer Kura, Deputy Director General (Media, Communications, Publicity), NIM asserted that the validity of the third force initiative of the Nigeria Intervention Movement NIM has once again been proven by the elder statesman who is not known to be associated with frivolity.

The group said: “It will be recalled that Obasanjo in a most dramatic dimension earlier today (yesterday) charged Nigerians to henceforth seek for their political and economic salvation in the direction of a political third force outside the two dominant parties in Nigeria; PDP and APC, whom he said have both grossly disappointed the people of Nigeria.

“NIM affirms that Obasanjo’s historic clarion call to the nation at its formative stage has profoundly validated the initiave of NIM’s conveners to facilitate an all inclusive, non-partisan, pan-Nigerian political third force to rescue the country from the impunity and lack lustre performance of traditional political elite in the PDP and the APC among others.

“While endorsing and applauding Obasanjo’s historic statement on the way forward for Nigeria in the march towards the 2019, NIM wishes to clearly state its resolve to embrace the strategic counsel contained in the elder statesman treaties on how the emergent Movement can rally and work with other Movements in building a major Coalition for Nigeria to save Nigerians from an inert political leadership.

Patrick Okohue, Lagos and Myke Uchendu, Abuja