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.
*Olugegun Obasanjo
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. http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/12/obj-prowling-goat-seller/#sthash.8yUovF6a.dpuf

Obasanjo is simply a coward.

Obasanjo is acting like the opposition because he fears of the outcome of a Jonathan defeat to Buhari and the possibility that Buhari will probe his govt.

Obasanjo is a coward as his northern masters are not happy that a Niger Delta man eventually succeeded him after they put him there.

The arrangement was that he will hand over to the original landlords after his 8 yrs in office.

Obasanjo is simply a coward

we know,we are waiting