Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that President Muhammadu Buhari should not hide under untenable excuses to explain away his failure to meet the expectations of the people.
According to him, the now trite recourse to blaming the past administration for his inability to achieve results.
Olusegun Obasanjo, who spoke at his Presidential Library, Abeokuta, Ogun State, while playing host to the New Nigeria 2019 Group, said that he had in the open letter he wrote about three months ago to the President accused Buhari and the All Progressives Congress of bringing hardship on Nigerians and running ineffective economic policies which had crippled businesses.
The visiting group was led by the convener, Chima Anyaso, in company with Moses Siasia,
Obasanjo noted that it was uncharitable for the President and his party to continue to whine about challenges almost three years in office, while they had failed to solve the challenges.
Obasanjo said: “What those I call power addicts would want to do is to divide you based on gender, age, tribe, religion and region. You have one commonality, the interest of Nigeria and it doesn’t matter where you come from. We had that interest.
“The truth is this: When you have an ineffective and incompetent government, we are all victims. And don’t let anybody deceive you. Those of you who are in business, your business could have been better today if we have a competent and effective and performing government.
“As I said, stop giving excuses; we met challenges. If there are no challenges, then we wouldn’t need you to come. You came in because you know there are challenges and then giving us excuse that you have many challenges, that is why you haven’t achieved results. And then you still want to go for second term.
Don’t reinforce failure “The first lesson I learned in my military training is to never reinforce failure. What we have now is failure. Never reinforce failure; let failure be failure. And if you do not see what you should see, you will then be a victim of what you don’t like because it’s only when you see what you should see and you do what you should do that you put away what you do not like.
“If you don’t see what you should see and you don’t do what you should do, you will be a victim of what you don’t like. “What those I call power addicts would want to do is to divide you based on gender, age, tribe, religion and region. You have one commonality- interest of Nigeria.
“This time, for us to make it, we need all hands on deck. You see, I have publicly said and I mean it, that as a party, neither PDP nor APC can get us there as they have been. Never mind reforms and apology and all that. And yet we have to get there.
“I asked one of the foundation members of PDP, that when we started, was it a grassroots party? He said it was an elitist party. Really, we have never had the so-called grassroots party. Even NEPU which we could say is the nearest was not grassroot enough.
Grassroots movement “I believe strongly that we must have a strong popular grassroots movement to bring about the change, sustainability and stability that we need in our democracy and development.
“But let us bring together all these movements because we are pursuing the same thing. If we allow ourselves to be taken piecemeal, it is finished. “Yes, I said you cannot take PDP as it is and APC as it is; but they are not all made of evil people. There are good people among them. I said PDP is leprous hand, APC is leprous hand, but there are some clean fingers in them.
“So, let’s take those clean fingers in them and graft the clean fingers in our own. That is the way to go and if we go that way, we will get there, we will move together, and we will move fast and we will move far.”
However, the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr Femi Adesina, who responded to Obasanjo’s comments in a telephone interview on Channels Television on Monday, said the assessment was not new.
“Already, the statement issued few months ago by the Minister of Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed, in response to the earlier criticism made against the government by Obasanjo had adequately addressed the issues raised’’.
He maintained that the APC-led Federal Government would keep making reference to the failures of the past administration with a view to guiding against such mistakes in future.
According to Adesina, the Buhari administration has successfully tackled mismanagement of the nation’s economy, as Nigeria now has more savings in its foreign reserve than ever before.
Obasanjo had had earlier issued a 13-page statement, criticising Buhari’s performance and concluded that Buhari should not seek re-election in 2019.
