The on-going tirade between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari looks like a reincarnation of how the former treated the former President Goodluck Jonathan. However, in President Buhari’s case, Obasanjo’s antics seem to be counter-productive, writes TOPE SUNDAY.
At the moment, all seems not to be well with former President Olusegun Obasanjo as he fights to redeem his image over the alleged $16 billion his administration reportedly spent on the power sector. The allegation emanated from the Presidency following the former president’s invectives against the administration of President Buhari.
Obasanjo’s government which ran from 1999 to 2007 is engulfed in the $16bn mismanagement scandal because almost 11 years after the expiration of the tenure, the amount it expended on the sector still generates controversies.
In the beginning
Prior to the 2015 elections, which brought Buhari to power, Obasanjo was one of the country’s leaders that rooted for the president amidst stiff resistance from the then ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Obasanjo marketed Buhari and prophesied that he would be the next president.
A week to the presidential election in 2015, Obasanjo while speaking in Abeokuta his country at a meeting with a group, Concerned Citizens of Nigeria, predicted that Buhari will be elected on 28 March as Nigeria’s new president, to succeed the then President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.
Obasanjo, who spoke gloomily about Buhari during the visit, declared that he has confidence in the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammed Buhari because he was a trained military officer.
The former president, who responded to the request of the group to intervene in the country’s looming political crisis before matters degenerate, had said: “You need not to worry about anything. There can never be any June 12 annulment again. Buhari is not Abiola, he is a trained and highly intelligent soldier.
“Oyegun is not Anenih, Osinbajo is not Kingibe. Jega is not Nwosu, Jonathan is not IBB and this time around, Obasanjo will not support any interim government. Obasanjo will rather support a free, fair and credible election.”
Truly, Obasanjo kept to his words and held a series of meetings with the leaders of the then opposition party, APC, to endorse Buhari.
Earlier in February of the same year in faraway in Kenya, at the launch of his 1,500-page autobiography, My Watch, Obasanjo publicly endorsed Buhari.
In a report by the London-based Financial Times newspapers, the former president was quoted to have said: “Circumstances (Buhari) will be working under if he wins the election are different from the one he worked under before, where he was both the executive and the legislature – he knows that. He’s smart enough. He’s educated enough. He’s experienced enough. Why shouldn’t I support him?”
Subsequently, he expressed the view that Buhari would be well equipped to combat corruption and restore the fighting spirit to an army that has struggled in the face of the onslaught by Boko Haram, which has seized a swath of territory in the North-east.
Turn against Jonathan in Buhari’s favour
The ex-president fought his estranged god son, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to a standstill, the development that cost the Ijaw born politician his re-election bid.
Aside from his previous letters to Jonathan, Obasanjo in his 18-page letter dated December 2, 2013, and tilted: “Before It Is Too Late,” accused Jonathan of driving the country to the precipice and allowing deceit, corruption and mutual distrust to tear at the fabric of the ation.
The former president, who is reputed for writing letters to the powers that be in the country since he left office as the Military Head of State and later as a civilian president, in his letter to Jonathan, noted that he was making open, upon his failure to act or acknowledge earlier letters, and accused him of decimating the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP through his determination for a second term against earlier promises of serving one term.
He also accused President Jonathan of spawning a support base of ethnic militants, corrupt politicians and armed militia, all for the personal agenda of political survival.
But Jonathan in his reply to Obasanjo’s letter, which was dated December 20, 2013, treated him with some ditch of respect, and replied to all the allegations and issues as raised in the OBJ’s 18-page letter.
Unlike Obasanjo’s letter, which dripped with venom and did not spare Jonathan’s perceived misgovernance; the Ijaw born ex-president in his reply was full of rhetoric and explanations.
However, the OBJ letter was later served as an albatross to Jonathan’s government, his person and re-election; and subsequently worked in favour of Buhari to emerge as the 15th Nigerian president after his third previous failed attempt.
The messiah letter and Obasanjo’s Third Force
Before the tiff between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari started, the former visited the latter for about four times at the Villa. In one of those visits, Obasanjo reportedly expressed satisfaction with the mode and style of Buhari’s governance.
But the relationship did not last long as Obasanjo in his usual letter writing, on January 23, this year, renewed his antics of castigating the Nigeria’s presidents.
In his 23-paragraph letter titled: “The Way Out: A Clarion Call For Coalition For Nigeria Movement,” Obasanjo chastised Buhari’s government, asked him not to seek re-election, and canvassed for the creation of a Coalition for Nigeria (CN) Movement which will consist of people who are concerned and willingly-ready for positive and drastic change, progress and involvement “that will give hope and future to all our youth and dignity and full participation to all our women.”
Among other things, Obasanjo in his latest epistle to Buhari also said: “Buhari is weak in the knowledge and understanding of the economy. 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.”
He asked President Buhari to stop condoning corruption among some inner caucus of the Presidency, saying: “Culture of condoning and turning blind eye will cover up rather than clean up. And going to justice must be with clean hands.”
Obasanjo also accused the Buhari-led federal government of wittingly or unwittingly allowing the herdsmen/crop farmers’ crisis “to turn sour and messy.”
“It is no credit to the federal government that the herdsmen rampage continues with careless abandon and without finding an effective solution to it,” he alleged.
He, therefore, advised Buhari not to “over-push his luck or over-tax the patience and tolerance of Nigerians, and urged him to honourably “dismount from the horse.”
The $16bn power scandal
Though, barely 24 hours when Obasanjo released his ‘bomb letter,’ the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, responded, his response could also be likened to the Jonathan’s reaction.
In a seven–page statement, the Information minister, thanked Obasanjo for his letter, and clarified the misconception he has about the administration of President Buhari in a kind-tendered tone.
But about three months after Obasanjo’s letter, Buhari in what appeared a direct rebuttal of the former president’s summation of his administration as a disaster, criticised his government of harvesting nothing out of the $16 billion allegedly expended on the power sector.
Buhari, who spoke while receiving leaders of the Buhari Support Organisation, BSO, said there was nothing to show for the proceeds from oil revenue between 1999 and 2014 when, according to him, oil prices soared to about $135, he said he had restrained himself and his aides several times in the past from responding to various accusations of non-performance and clannishness levelled against him by Obasanjo.
According to the President, the debt incurred from the $16 billion spent by Obasanjo on power without any output is now being paid by hisadministration, adding that in Nigeria’s history, his government had made the highest capital allocations in the 2017 and 2018 budgets.
Obasanjo, who ruled the country on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), while reacting to the allegation levelled against him by Buhari, accused the president of ignorance, saying that Buhari is relying on the unsubstantiated allegations against him by the then leadership of House of Representatives over the project.
Obasanjo, in a statement by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, who submitted that lack of proper understanding prompted the President to make such a comment, said: “It has come to the attention of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo that a statement credited to President Muhammadu
Buhari, apparently without correct information and based on ignorance, suggested that $16 billion was wasted on power projects by ‘a formerPresident.’ We believe that the President was re-echoing the unsubstantiated allegation against Chief Obasanjo by his own predecessor but one.
“While it is doubtful that a President with proper understanding of the issue would utter such, it should be pointed out that records from the National Assembly had exculpated President Obasanjo of any wrong-doing concerning the power sector and has proved the allegations as false.
“For the records, Chief Obasanjo has addressed the issues of the power sector and the allegations against him on many occasions and platforms, including in his widely publicised book, My Watch, in which he exhaustively stated the facts and reproduced various reports by both the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which conducted a clinical investigation into the allegations against Chief Obasanjo, and the Ad Hoc Committee on the Review of the Recommendations in the Report of the Committee on Power on the Investigation into how the Huge Sums Of Money was Spent on Power Generation, Transmission And Distribution between June 1999 and May 2007 without Commensurate Result.
“We recommend that the President and his co-travellers should read Chapters 41, 42, 43 and 47 of My Watch for Chief Obasanjo’s insights and perspectives on the power sector and indeed what transpired when the allegation of $16 billion on power projects was previously made.
If he cannot read the three-volume book, he should detail his aides to do so and summarise the chapters in a language that he will easily understand.
At the moment, Obasnjo is under fire following Buhari’s remark that $16 billion was wasted on power projects, without result, during his administration.
Although Obasanjo claimed that the National Assembly had already cleared him of any wrong doing and that he was ready for probe on the spending, some Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), the Nigeria Labour Congress and The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), called for his probe.
On his part, the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Chairman Prof Itse Sagay (SAN), said former President Obasanjo ran one of the most corrupt administrations in Nigeria’s history.
He said: “I think he should be probed. You see, President Buhari has been very generous and mild towards his predecessors, not wanting to cause discomfort and embarrassment for them out of respect for the positions they held.
“But Obasanjo is a man who does not respect himself, who thinks he is the President-General of Nigeria for life and has a right at any time to wade in and be very caustic and publicly insulting to his successors, just because he’s envious of the same position he held. He cannot detach himself from the Presidency.
“I think he needs to be brought to order. He has been tolerated enough in this country. The President’s remark was very appropriate and more and more should come because Obasanjo ran one of the most corrupt governments this country has ever seen.”
Collaborating Sagay’s position, another Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Emeka Ngige, said the report of the House of Representatives which had earlier indicted Obasanjo should be revisited.
He said: “I believe there was a report of the House of Representatives Committee on Power that indicted President Obasanjo in 2008 for various infractions on power sector contracts during his regime. The committee recommended that EFCC or ICPC should do further investigation and possibly prosecute him, if found culpable. That report was kept in a deep freezer till date.”
Similarly, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), through its Secretary General, Comrade Peter Oso-Eson, said if there is evidence on the allegation, nothing should stop its investigation, adding that anybody that is found guilty should be prosecuted.
“If there is any evidence on this allegation, then those found guilty should be prosecuted because there is nobody above the law. This should be a sign that the government is serious about its anti-corruption campaign.”
In a sharp departure from others, SERAP called for further probe of the alleged mismanagement of 16 billion dollars power projects between 1999 and 2007.
The group, in a statement by its Executive Director, Adetokunbo Mumuni, urged President Buhari to urgently refer the case to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) for further investigation.
It said the alleged squandering of over N11 trillion meant to provide regular electricity supply covering the governments of former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, should also be investigated.
As it were, unlike how Obasanjo treated Jonathan, the same cannot be said of Buhari’s as his criticisms against the president have opened up a can of worms. He now faces credibility question.
