If the anti-corruption war of President Muhammadu Buhari was total and blanket in nature, corrupt-minded Nigerians like former President Olusegun Obasanjo would be cooling their feet in jail by now, Senator Abdullahi Adamu (APC, Nasarawa West) has said. Adamu, who stated this yesterday, during an interaction with journalists in Abuja, said he agreed with the former president’s submission that the anti-corruption war, as presently being prosecuted, was selective, the benefit of which, according to him, Obasanjo is enjoying, going by his multiple corrupt practices while in government from 1999 to 2007.
He was reacting to Obasanjo’s recent condemnation of President Buhari’s administration, and the advice that Buhari should not seek a return ticket for 2019.
Countering the former president, he said, “Chief Obasanjo said that President Buhari is selective in hisanti-corruption war. I agree with him because if the president was not selective, Chief Obasanjo himself would be in the dock today on trial on charges of corruption arising from the corrupt practices in the pursuit of his third term gambit in the National Assembly in 2006.
“He (Obasanjo) knows as well as I and other leading members of the PDP, that he badly wanted it and initiated the process of constitutional amendment. He bribed each member of the National Assembly who signed to support the amendment with the whopping sum of N50 million.
“The fresh mint money was taken in its original boxes presumably from the vaults of the Central Bank of Nigeria and distributed among the legislators. “The money was not his, and it was not appropriated by the National Assembly as required by law.
I, therefore, agree that in failing to make former President Obasanjo account for the money, President Buhari is waging his anti -corruption war selectively.” Continuing, he said: “Nor should we forget that President Buhari has also not bothered to interrogate Obasanjo’s role in the Halliburton scandal for which some Americans are cooling their heels in jail.
“Perhaps President Buhari might wish to look in the Siemens affairs in which the Obasanjo administration was indicted.” Aside from the issue of corruption, the former governor also punctured Obasanjo’s low marks for Buhari’s government on economy and security, declaring that Buhari inherited most of the problems afflicting the nation from the two areas.
“Every administration grapples with problems thrown at it by circumstances beyond its control. President Buhari inherited an economy that was unsteady on its feet. “He also inherited the security problems such as Boko Haram, armed robberies and kidnappings. Yes, I agree, that under his watch, these problems should grow less, not more. But the solution to problems such as these is a slow and agonising process, since he has no powers to simply make them disappear overnight.”
He lampooned Obasanjo further by alleging that his eight years in government almost ruined the hard earned democratic governance in Nigeria as a result of self delusion and messianic mentality. He said: “He waged his anticorruption in a manner intended to rubbish all our revered institutions such as the courts and the National Assembly in a way to be the only Nigerian without palm oil on his hands. “The courts quaked over his unconstitutional rampage.
Chief Obasanjo left our democracy in a lurch. He was like a wrecking ball. In 2007, he alone, decided his successor in office contrary to the rules of the game, the repercussions and consequences of which are now history.” On the Coalition Obasanjo advocated for in his statement, the lawmaker said it would not fly. This, he said, is an exercise in ‘political skullduggery’ and warned that if he doesn’t desist from his behavioural pattern, he will end up being a national nuisance and irrelevant figure
