Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo has come hard on
President Goodluck Jonathan over the postponement of the general
election.
Consequently, he has publicly endorsed the presidential candidate
of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Major-General
Muhammadu Buhari, to unseat President Goodluck Jonathan.
According to a report by the London-based Financial Times
newspaper, Obasanjo, who had said last week that he would not
speak on the elections until after the polls, broke his vow of silence
in Nairobi Monday, where he launched his 1,500-page
autobiography which was highly critical of Jonathan, whose ascent
to the presidency he helped to engineer.
The book has been banned in Nigeria pending libel hearings
brought by Buruji Kashamu, an ally of the president.
“The signs are not auspicious” in the wake of the six-week
postponement of the general election, said Obasanjo, who remains
an influential, even contentious figure at home. “I don’t know
whether a script is being played.”
Coming from a founding member of the ruling Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP), his public endorsement of the main opposition
challenger underscores the extent to which Jonathan has lost
backing from sections of the establishment.
The country was due to go to the polls this Saturday, with Buhari’s
campaign gathering steam in what was expected to be the
country’s closest electoral contest since the restoration of civilian
rule in 1999.
But the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) last
weekend postponed the vote until March 28 after security chiefs
said they could not safeguard the polls while launching a regional
military campaign to reclaim besieged territory from Islamist
extremists.
The delay should also enable biometric voter cards to be distributed
to the millions of voters who have yet to receive them and who
were at risk of being disenfranchised.
However, the hold-up has raised fears among civil society and
opposition activists that the government might seek to use security
concerns as a pretext to extend its mandate beyond a four-year
term that ends on May 29, and risk plunging the country back into
the hands of the military rather than tempt fate at the polls.
Jonathan and the army have publicly pledged to abide by the
constitution.
But Obasanjo said in an interview: “I sincerely hope that the
president is not going for broke and saying ‘look dammit, it’s either
I have it or nobody has it’. I hope that we will not have a coup… I
hope we can avoid it.”
Obasanjo was instrumental to Jonathan’s ascent from governor to
the presidency. But relations between the two men have soured
since he chose Jonathan as a vice-presidential candidate in 2007
and backed him as president when Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the
incumbent, died in office three years later.
Obasanjo continues to play an active international role but said he
has no ambition to return to the political centre stage. “I am an old
man and I’m enjoying what I’m doing now… And then you forget I
am a farmer; I have to manage my farm.”
This is the first time Obasanjo has come out openly to support
Buhari.
“The 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,”
said Obasanjo.
“He’s smart enough. He’s educated enough. He’s experienced
enough. Why shouldn’t I support him?”
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.
“It’s a question of leadership — political and military,” Obasanjo
said of the crisis facing the army.
“I think you need to ask (Jonathan) how has he let (the army) go to
this extent… Many things went wrong: recruitment went wrong;
training went wrong; morale went down; motivation not there;
corruption was deeply ingrained; welfare was bad.”
The former leader also expressed dismay at the extent to which
billions of dollars in oil revenues had “all disappeared” since he left
office, when reserves had reached $45 billion and the government
had $20bn more in rainy day savings (Excess Crude Account).
Speaking ironically of the negative impact on tumbling oil prices on
government reserves, Obasanjo added: “There’ll be less in the pot,
for stealing or corruption.”
In a related development, Buhari has asked Jonathan and the PDP
to come clean on the speculations in the public domain that there
are plans by his government to scuttle elections and impose an
interim government on the country.
A statement from the Buhari Presidential Organisation also decried
what it termed embedded vested interests and sinister motives
behind the postponement of the polls, warning that Jonathan should
open up in order to avert unrest and possible civil disobedience that
could scuttle the country’s hard-earned democracy.
The statement issued yesterday on behalf of Buhari by the Director
of Media and Publicity of the APC Campaign Council, Malam Garba
Shehu, frowned on the unholy alliance between the Jonathan
government, the PDP and the military for the purpose of subverting
the franchise of the people in the rescheduled presidential and other
elections on March 28 and April 11, respectively.
“If the witch cried in the night and the baby died in the morning, it
would not be a mere coincidence. Hence, the body of civilised and
democratic people around the world believes that the security
excuse used by this unpopular government to prolong the polls is
untrue and pretentious.
“What type of democracy allows compromising security chiefs to
determine when elections would hold or not? Now, the National
Security Adviser (NSA) has become the megaphone for this
government.
“He went to Chatham House in the UK to call for election
postponement which he has now obtained. Next, he claims he
would crush Boko Haram within six weeks. What if he can’t, will
there be a further excuse to extend the elections and create a
constitutional impasse? Nigerians are no fools and nobody can pull
soiled cotton over our eyes anymore.
“We are inundated with information as to how this government
wants to tamper with due process by discrediting INEC and even
sack its chairman, raise false alarms, rig the elections with military
connivance and eventually scuttle democracy, replacing it with an
interim government.
“For all we know and can see, the contraption of an interim
government has no place in the constitution as former President
Obasanjo said on BBC Monday night.
“President Jonathan must come clean on these allegations. He is
the Commander-in-Chief, and not the NSA. Hence he must, as a
matter of urgency, speak to the nation and the world on these
salient allegations.
“A refusal would make him the historic president who doesn’t give a
damn while on national assignment,” the statement said.
Source: DailyPost
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