Once again, Obasanjo did what he does best. Adorning a toga of the conscience of the nation, he embarked on a crusade on her behalf. In a letter dated January 13, he wanted Bukola Saraki the Senate President and his counterpart in the Lower House to look into ‘the mind-boggling expenditure going into cars, furniture, housing renovation which he said were ‘veritable sources of waste and corruption’; the ‘different disingenuous ways and devices the legislature employed to overturn the recommendation of the RMAFC in order to hike up for themselves that which they are unwilling to spell out in detail’; and challenged them to “have the courage to publish its recurrent budgets for the years 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015 to enable comparisons made between their emoluments and those of their counterparts in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and even Malaysia and Indonesia who are richer and more developed than we are. Many have wondered what qualified Obasanjo for this periodic crusade which he first embarked upon shortly after handing over power voluntarily to Shehu Shagari in 1979. Fate ceded that role to Obasanjo. For instance others fought the civil war, he took the glory. The assassination of Murtala Mohammed in 1976 threw him up. He faithfully implemented the transition programme and thereafter became a respected international statesman. He was to later exercise tremendous influence on the administrations of shehu Shagari , Ibrahim Babangida and General Abacha who sent him to Gashua prison. Our country is also unique in many respects. Nigeria is the only known federation where you could become an elected president twice without being sponsored by any of the federating building blocks. With such a feat, akin only to climbing the palm tree from the top, leaders like Obasanjo can, in defiance of all known sociological state model builders’ postulations that a man is first a product of a family before becoming a member of a group, believe he can indeed climb the palm tree from the top by being a Nigerian first and Yoruba as an afterthought. Obasanjo probably actually believes he is ‘Mr. Nigeria’. Not his wife’s book that detailed his humble beginning or his dearest daughter, Iyabo’s public chastisement about thinking he owns Nigeria could cure him of the illusion that without Obasanjo, there will be no Nigeria. And by virtue of being PDP leader in and out of office since 1999, Obasanjo can lay claim to the title of ‘ father of all the corrupt elements that have held our nation to ransom since 1999’. After all, the 22 elected PDP governors in 1999 out of which 17 were indicted for corruption by 2008, all the successive PDP chairmen, senate presidents and speakers of the lower house between 1999 and 2015 address Obasanjo as ‘Baba’. Of course Saraki and Dogara of the Senate and the House of Assembly are Obasanjo PDP grandchildren. His house was Saraki’s first port of call after trading off the victory of his party in order to usurp the senate presidency. Obasanjo, knows Saraki the target of his crusade this time around like the palm of his hands in the same manner he knows his other illustrious, some will say notorious, children such as Diepreye Alamieseigha, Odili, Ibori, Igbinedion, Okupe, Fayose, Daniel, Jolly Nyame, Joshua Dariye, Boni Haruna, Mu’ azu, Chris Uba who locked up governor Chris Ngige, like a common criminal over the sharing of confiscated Anambra government funds and ex-president Jonathan who says stealing was not corruption. But does Obasanjo expect Saraki to give what he has not got?Well, Saraki also seems to know his father and how to massage his ego. Like a son who knows how to manipulate his father, Saraki praised President Obasanjo ‘for his consistent role in always reminding those of us in government about our responsibilities to the general public and offering timely advice where necessary’. He was however silent on his father’s accusation of massive corruption, greed, impunity and lawlessness at the National Assembly as well as his claim that most members of the 469-member assembly were receiving constituency allowances without maintaining constituency offices as the law requires of them. Saraki then went on to speak vaguely about the senate’s commitment ‘to good governance, transparency, accountability, due process and responsiveness to the economic reality of our nation’. On his part, Dino Melaye’s reaction to Obasanjo’s letter seems to reflect his special endowment-capacity to play the clown and the reflective. Unfortunately most people who watch his theatrics on television trying to justify abandoning his senate duties to accompany Toyin Saraki to EFCC’s office or to justify his role in the invasion of CCT along with 84 senators during the senate president’s arraignment for false declaration of assets will most likely associate him with the former. Few remember Melaye had the presence of mind during the obscene N8.64b National Assembly wardrobe allowance controversy to tell his colleagues ‘they cannot be talking about change and this kind of money in this country now when people are hungry.’ But tragically, following Obasanjo’s warning that ‘‘it will not only be insensitive but callously so for leaders, who call for sacrifice from the citizenry to live in obscene opulence’, the same Senator Melaye, like a clown comically says: ‘Our leader has mistaken the 8th National Assembly as the same National Assembly that defrauded him in 2007; that is those who collected his money and refused to implement the third term agenda… I appeal to Baba that we are not the ones please. After nine years of that bribery saga, the first of its kind, I expect forgiveness to have taken place”. He also said: “There was the case of bribery introduced by the Obasanjo regime in the desperate attempt to remove Speaker Ghali Umar Na’Abba from office then. In fact, there was an open display of that bribery money on the floor of the House”. Concluding, Melaye asks; “I hope this is not in an attempt to cover up and distract attention from the Halliburton and Siemens corruption allegations?’’ But if one may ask the irrepressible Melaye, what has this clowning got to do with the massive corruption Obasanjo claims is going in the National Assembly?The truth however is that slippery Saraki, clowning Dino Melaye along with cunning Obasanjo, their father, are all parts of the problem and can therefore not be parts of the solution. The challenge before our nation is how to move beyond the baleful legacies of Obasanjo and those of his PDP children that breed nothing but corruption. The starting point is for APC oligarchy to take control of their party and use it as weapon for development as has been done in all developed democracies. Nigerians voted for APC because it promises change. Their job will be made easier if they allow all the senators that do not share their party’s world-view to join PDP. Now with the success recorded with the card readers, politicians now know Nigerians don’t actually suffer from collective amnesia as they had made us to believe. Those greedy clowning senators who want Nigeria taxpayers to cough out N8.64b as wardrobe allowance and the Saraki ‘like mind’ senators who think Saraki as number three citizen of the country owes Nigeria no explanation as to the source of the massive wealth he allegedly amassed between 1990 and 2009 should be given a choice to re-join PDP and await the verdict of voters in 2019.
By Jide Oluwajuyitan, The Nation.

Bro.

Try to Paragraph the write up please.

Thanks.