By Oceherome Nnanna
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is haunting his
hand-picked former protégé, President Goodluck
Jonathan, like a malevolent ghost. You may wonder why
OBJ, after four years as a military ruler and another
eight years as an elected president, is still butting like a
stubborn, demon-possessed ram at the doors of Aso
Villa, Abuja? What does he still want? What did he
forget in the seat of power after occupying it for 12
years? Why can’t he just go home and enjoy his new-
found affluence after his latest eight years as president
during which he doubled as Minister of Petroleum
Resource for six years?
If you put this question before Obasanjo he will tell you
it is because he “loves” Nigeria; he is a great
“nationalist”, and he cannot keep quiet when things are
going wrong. He will conveniently hide the fact that he
is the cause of many of our problems.
Political interests
He will not accept responsibility. Instead, he will divert
attention and point accusing fingers at others, making
accusations that he is also guilty of a million times
over. In the process, Obasanjo succeeds in hoodwinking
a few gullible, uninformed Nigerians and raises applause
among those whose political interests resonate with his
objective of bringing down a sitting president.
But those of us
who know him
probably more
than he knows
himself are not
carried away.
We know his
motives and
methods all too
well.
Obasanjo’s
estranged
daughter,
Senator Iyabo
Obasanjo, in a
letter in
January this
year in which
she disowned
her father, told
us Obasanjo
believes in his
heart he “owns” Nigeria. President Jonathan, in his own
angry rejoinder to a windy, scathing attack by Obasanjo,
likened the Ota poultry farmer to a goat seller who, after
selling his goat and pocketing the money, still holds on
to the goat’s tether rope. In other words, Obasanjo,
after handpicking and installing people in power, seeks
to control them. When they refuse to be at his beck and
call, he starts to fight dirty in the public square because
he has come to see the Nigerian seat of power as his
personal booty.
After all, he fought the civil war and collected the
instrument of surrender from Biafra. We have since
heard the truth about how Obasanjo fought that war.
One of the civil war commanders, Brigadier Godwin
Alabi-Isama, in his book: The Tragedy of Victory,
actually described OBJ as a coward. In various
interviews after the book was published, he disclosed
that Obasanjo has bullet wounds on his buttocks. This
means he was shot while running away from enemy
onslaught! But he makes loud noises about his civil war
“heroism” and feels entitled to exclusive freebooting on
our national estate.
Obasanjo is confronting GEJ because the president is a
gentleman. He could not try it with the late President
Umaru Yar’ Adua, who was much tougher and savvier in
the game of power than Jonathan.
As sick as Yar’Adua was, he was able to curtail
Obasanjo’s goat-seller mentality and keep him tightly
leashed. Those were the days when people like Nasir el
Rufai actually bolted to America and only returned to
become a troublemaker because Jonathan is a
gentleman.
This same Obasanjo troubled General Babangida when
the latter was in power because Babangida respected
him. But when he tried it with General Abacha, we know
what happened. Obasanjo came out of jail in 1998
looking like an exhumed corpse.
Besides, Obasanjo is a master in the game of hypocrisy.
He likes to call other people thieves, and he is the first
to accuse another person of being corrupt. The idea is
to divert attention from his own unquantifiable deeds
that fabulously enriched him, both as a military leader
and elected president.
Sound Sultan, one of Nigeria’s most creative avant-
garde musicians, has a song he entitled: “One day
bushmeat go catch de hunter“. In it he sang: “Ole de
shout ole”.When you catch a pickpocket red-handed, to
avoid being lynched he begins to shout: “ole!, ole!!”
(Thief!Thief!!).Was it not under Obasanjo that bags of
money meant to induce lawmakers to impeach a
political enemy of the president were displayed in the
House of Representatives? Yet he calls MPs “looters”.
When Abacha raised the pump prices of petroleum in
1994 he established the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF and
used the proceeds to intervene in infrastructural
reconstruction. Where did Obasanjo put proceeds of
eight price hikes that took fuel price from N22 to N65
per litre over eight years? At least, Jonathan ploughs
back his own increase from N65 to N97 into a fuel
subsidy regime that guarantees steady fuel supply and
funds for the implementation of Subsidy Re-investment
Programmes, SURE-P, nationwide.
Fuel subsidy was bedevilled by corruption, but it is
working. We are enjoying it. But we can’t see anything
Obasanjo did with his own extra N43 per litre. Billions
were sunk into the refineries but they never worked.
Billions were wasted on Independent Power Plants, but
turbines were imported and left for years at the ports
because they could not be moved inland. Government
companies were sold for pennies to fronts and cronies.
But in four years, Jonathan has laid down a clear
agenda to overcome the challenges of the power sector.
It is very slow-going, but is moving forward, with zero
reports of corruption in the sector which is now mainly
in private hands.
Yes indeed, Jonathan has his problems as a leader. He
is too laid back about fighting corruption. It doesn’t
seem to bother him. President Jonathan is too much in
the background as my leader. I like my leaders there up
front, inspiring me with words, deeds and examples. I
like them tough and decisive, but always putting the
interest of the nation first. I don’t like walking up front
and looking back for my leader.
Thirdly, I don’t like the way Jonathan has handled Boko
Haram. If he had done the needful things two years ago,
we would not have the second largest number of
displaced persons in the world, with parts of our
territory under devilish Salafist Islamists.
I also have reasons to believe that if the Jonathan
regime was given the support it needed, it would have
recorded more successes than any other in our history.
The quest by regional hawks to snatch power by all
means, tied to the Boko Haram terror war and jackal-
like opposition, have taken a toll on all of us. No regime
has been sabotaged by the same people it strives to
save from their enemies the way some Northern leaders
have undermined the Jonathan regime. People who
destroyed Nigeria in their 40 years of total brigandage
are ganging up as the “opposition” to return us to
where they left us in 1999, and Obasanjo has become
their fire-eating generalissimo.
If Jonathan is a problem, Obasanjo created it by
selecting him to pair with a terminally ill Yar’Adua, so
that he (OBJ) would call the shots from Ota. Yar’ Adua
and Jonathan were his “Plan B” after he failed to grab
third term. I agree with former Speaker, House of
Representatives, Umar Ghali Na’Abba, that if Obasanjo
looks into the mirror he will see the trouble with Nigeria.
The goat seller wants his goat back after pocketing his
profit. Well, Nigeria is not Obasanjo’s goat. The earlier
he gets the message the better for him – and us all.

Ssorai

i didn't read everything finish but that dude make sense

what will u call a man who slept with his son's wife ?? so to me, OBJ Is headless fowel waitin to be kill