WARRI— Former President
Olusegun Obasanjo, yesterday,
blamed the incumbent president
Goodluck Jonathan for allowing
the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, to grow into a monster that is now
uncontrollable by his failure to
act on a report submitted to the
government. The former president who spoke
at a lecture delivered by
Professor Bolaji Akinyemi to mark
the 40th anniversary of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor’s call to ministry
at the Word of Life Bible Church,
Warri in Delta State, also tasked
Nigerians to choose between a
strong leader who might adopt
unusual approach to tackle a problem or a weak leader who
will leave the problem to fester. Answering a question from a
pastor from Borno State on how
he could forge any form of unity
with those who are
perpetuating violence in the
northern part of the country, Obasanjo went emotional,
saying: “Boko Haram is an ill wind
that blows nobody no good.”
He proceeded to narrate his
experience when he went on a
fact-finding mission to Borno
State which was regarded as the
base of Boko Haram. He said: “They Boko Haram stated
their grievances and I promised
to relay them to the authorities
in power, because that was the
best I could do. I did report. But
my fear at that time is still my fear till today. When you have a
sore and fail to attend to it
quickly, it festers and grows to
become something else. “Whichever way, you just have to
attend to it. Don’t leave it
unattended to. On two occasions
I had to attend to the problem I
faced at that time. I sent soldiers
to a place and 19 of them were killed. If I had allowed that to
continue, I will not have
authority to send security
whether police, soldier and any
force any where again. So, I had
to nip it in the bud and that was the end of that particular
problem,” he said. He was, however, careful to
admit that all problems might not
require that kind of treatment.
According to him, “if you say you
don’t want a strong leader who
can have all characteristics of leaders including God fearing,
then have a weak leader and the
rest of the problem is yours.” He argued that “the beauty of
democracy is that power rests in
the people, and every elected
person would seek your votes to
come back; if you don’t want him,
he won’t come back. He noted that people had been saying
that he brought President
Goodluck Jonathan but what
they have failed to admit is that
he didn’t give all the votes that
brought the man to power. The erstwhile president
therefore charged Nigerians to
stand up and take their destinies
in their own hands, reminding
them of a Yoruba adage, “if you
say it the way it is, you will die; if you don’t say anything at all, you
will die, why don’t you say it and
die?” Akinyemi blasts former leaders Earlier in his lecture, titled: “The
Nigeria of my Dream: Towards
the consolidation of national
unity”, Professor Akinyemi had,
among others, said emphatically
that the way we can have a consensus in the country is to
have a national conference. The former External Affairs
Minister was appalled by the
hypocrisy shown by ex-
presidents and ex-heads of
state who had continued to
preach what they did not practice while they were in
office. “How does one explain
revelations that from 1960,
outflow of funds from Nigeria
had got worse and yet the
sanctimonious speeches about anti-corruption continue to rent
the air,” Akinyemi asked, arguing
that current attempts to amend
the constitution would not solve
the socio-political problems
troubling the nation. According to him, “we will
continue to amend the
constitution and further amend
and there will be no solution until
we all agree to sit down at a
round table to write a constitution that Nigerians can
truly identify with.” The professor had argued that
if, “at independence in 1960, the
political elite had reached a
broad consensus on the
fundamental values that should
be the overriding principles of governance in order to make life
more abundant for all, to cater
for the poor, to increase
opportunities for all, to provide
safety net for the widow and
the orphan and to reduce the gap between the rich and the
poor, between the North and the
South and between the haves
and the have nots, they would
have laid a solid foundation for
stability in Nigeria.” Obasnjo oppose SNC But Chief Obasanjo disagreed
with the argument people had
often preferred to canvas for a
sovereign national conference,
saying there would be no room
big enough to accommodate every Nigerian at a roundtable
conference to find a national
consensus, noting that he would
rather want to see a Nigeria
where justice, fairness and
equity reign supreme. “Only a mad man will fail to
acknowledge that there is high
level corruption in the country”,
he said, stressing that the same
World Bank that is always
releasing figures about Nigeria’s poor state of economic
condition, recommended a
structural adjustment
programme for the nation and
nearly all the eggheads in the
country bought it even when the political leaders at the time said
it would be detrimental to the
nation. Obasanjo argued that the World
Bank had been talking about
corruption in the country and “I
challenged them to tell me the
names of the Nigerians who had
stashed monies abroad but they were not forthcoming except for
the case of the Abacha loot. We
recovered a large chunk of that
loot and they told us there was
still over $1 billion from that
family but my successors did not pursue any further. SAP made us poorer — OBJ “What I am saying is that it is the same World Bank that came to us
with structural adjustment and
some of us said it would make us
poorer, you (Akinyemi) were in
government at the time. We went
for structural adjustment and we were poorer. And then they
came up with an excuse that we
didn’t do it the way they wanted
us to do it. Many years later, they
accepted that we were right
and they were wrong,” Obasanjo stated. Emphasising the need to tackle
corruption in the country, the ex-
head of state narrated an
experience he had in Anambra
State, saying the government
signed a contract for turnkey project for carpets for $10
million, the money was paid but
no job done and when I asked
they referred me to the terms of
the contract. “I called World Bank, they said go
and look at the agreement, and
the agreement says they are not
responsible for how the money is
spent. The Word Bank then told
me that is the agreement and there is nothing we can do. “I don’t say that we are not
corrupt, we are. But are we
doing something about it? Once,
people said, the fear of Ribadu is
the beginning of wisdom. Then
what happened to Ribadu? Then there was no longer any
wisdom,” he stated. Obasanjo also disagreed with
Akinyemi on federal character.
While the political science
professor wants the nation to
dump federal character as a
means of choosing leaders, Obasanjo was of the opinion
that every nation of the world
has its own peculiar way of
addressing its peculiar problems. “I don’t see anything wrong with
federal character if we want to
wedge this country together
because if you want to enter a
place where there are 40 people
and they require somebody and you are Urhobo and at the back
you find somebody speaking
Urhobo, the tendency is for you
to go for that man. It’s natural.
So there is some form of security
in the application of federal character,” he said. On the location of strategic and
military assets which the lecturer
argued are located on the Zaria-
Kaduna axis out of mutual
suspicion, and recommended that
the nation must adopt the South African model of locating military
formations across the nation,
Obasanjo said: “If you look at
the deployment of troops and
formations in the country, it is
fairly well spread. “When I joined the army, there
were five battalions, Enugu,
Abeokuta, Ibadan and two were
stationed in Kaduna. That was
done by the colonial masters.
Immediately after independence, our political leaders decided
that there must be a battalion in
Jos, Lagos, but as at today after
the civil war there is a battalion
in Warri and some other places. “When we were doing that, we
took into account the strategic
interest of this country and
don’t forget that there are
certain types of trainings that
you can get in certain parts of the country,” he pointed out. Obasanjo, Akinyemi and the two
other discussants including Elder
Gamaliel Onosode, and Prof. Jim
Omatseye extolled the virtues of
Pastor Oritsejafor, praying that
the 40 years he had spent in ministry would be like the 40
years of tutelage of Moses.“Your
achievements in the last 40 years
must be regarded as mostly time
of preparations and now you
are beginning again. Those of your flock who love you and
believe in you will be with you all
the way through,” they said .
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