There appears no end in sight to the lingering feud between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari. 2019 general election is the crux of the matter. Obasanjo has maintained his ardent opposition to the re-election bid of President Buhari, and he is said to be marshaling resources and men to ensure that the ambition becomes a pipe dream.
Obasanjo had on January 23 this year written a letter to President Buhari advising him not to seek re-election in 2019 but to rather give way for younger people to take up the reins of power.
Obasanjo was very scathing in the missive in which he detailed what he claimed was the gross failings of the Buhari administration in managing the economy of Nigeria, coupled with the President’s alleged failure to tackle the incessant killings across the country and alleged acts of clannishness and nepotism.
Former military President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida also, in February, wrote to Buhari raising similar issues as Obasanjo and gave Buhari advice not to run again.
But on April 9, President Buhari defied the two former leaders and formerly declared his interest to seek re-election during the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of his party the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abuja.
Since Buhari’s declaration of interest to run, Obasanjo has not spared any moment to reiterate his stand that Buhari should have no business going back to office since he, according to Obasanjo, has not acquitted himself well in the last three years.
He has vehemently warned Nigerians to reject Buhari as he has failed serially and has allegedly even further divided Nigerians along ethnic, regional and religious lines.
On Wednesday May 2, Obasanjo through his media representative, Kehinde Adeyemi, took a swipe at Buhari once again, saying that Buhari and his supporters were specialists in peddling lies, particularly for claiming that Obasanjo had made a volte face to support Buhari’s ambition. He reminded the President’s handlers that it was vain to begin to dish out falsehood in their desperation to launder the President’s allegedly battered image to the Nigerian public and make it appear good before the people.
“It has come to the attention of Olusegun Obasanjo that some elements in the Muhammadu Buhari camp and or support group are desperate to secure a second term, fair or foul. In this desperation, everything is fair, including telling libelous lies against persons and institutions, instead of addressing the fundamental issues of statecraft and economic management.
“In the last 24 hours the internet has been bombarded with deliberate falsehoods aimed at hoodwinking the unsuspecting Nigerians to believe that Obasanjo has now supported Buhari for his second term because of some perceived Buhari’s ‘superlative’ performance in his encounter with Trump during his visit to the White House in Washington DC,” the statement read.
According to Obasanjo’s aide, “In another breath, these blackmailers insinuated that Chief Obasanjo met with some Nigeria Labour Congress leaders in his house in Abuja on Workers’ Day. What a pathetic fallacy! Chief Obasanjo never met any Labour man or woman on May 1, 2018 to make any supposed volte face to support Buhari.
“Furthermore, neither was Chief Obasanjo in Abuja on that date nor does he own a house in Abuja. Any time he visits Abuja, he usually stays in a guest house or hotel. For the record, Obasanjo has not and cannot endorse failure. His position remains as stated in his January 23rd, 2018 statement on the state of the nation. Chief Obasanjo sympathises with the plight of those campaigners and supporters of Buhari. He doesn’t believe dishing out fake news that can only be believed by imbeciles will turn black into white.”
The statement added that “Nigerians know that Chief Obasanjo has only spoken the truth about widening poverty, alienation and social disunity and near disintegration of the country through Buhari’s incompetence, stressing that Obasanjo will continue to exercise his right to free speech and that no amount of hate speech would assuage Nigerians who are in need of a brand new leadership. The mediocre performance of Buhari cannot be described by anybody as ‘superlative’ even by morons not the least President Obasanjo.”
BDSUNDAY gathered that Obasanjo, former Chief of Army Staff, Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, and Babangida may have perfected plans to ensure that Buhari does not return to power through sensitisation and massive mobilisation of the Nigerian citizens against the re-election ambition.
An official, who is one of those at the driving seat of the Obasanjo’s inspired Coalition for New Nigeria (CNM), told BDSUNDAY last Wednesday on condition of anonymity that the three retired generals are in advanced talks to strengthen the growing anti-Buhari alliance with some civil society organisations, religious groups, students, market women, professional bodies and a coalition of political parties, among others to stop President Buhari.
The source stressed that Obasanjo has sent out his foot soldiers to begin the groundwork, adding that the ex-military officers have vowed to fight Buhari from multiple fronts.
He further said that Obasanjo sees the Buhari attempt to seek re-election as “a declaration of war,” and has mobilised enormous resources for the anti-Buhari project.
Obasanjo according to the source has met severally with stakeholders and all the interest groups have been issued with the plans to frustrate Buhari’s return.
Recently, Obasanjo met with the chieftains of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and specifically had a closed-door with the SDP National Chairman, Olu Falae, including some yet-to-be named loyalists of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu, where they are said to have perfected strategy to sway the South West away from Buhari.
Katch Ononuju, a public affairs analyst, had suggested that the battle for the South West would be intense as the region is like the political vein that holds the heart of Buhari’s political survival in 2019. He however, posited that even Ahmed Tinubu, the acclaimed national leader of the ruling All APC, who is said to be working for Buhari, would abandon him in the most important hour of need as he (Tinubu) is allegedly under severe pressure from South West leaders who have warned of the risk of voting Buhari in 2019.
“There are people who are today with Buhari but during the elections they will work against him because if Buhari wins they will go to prison. Tinubu is not doing what he is doing because he wants to work for Buhari but he is doing that out of fear. A lot of people are working for him out of fear. The Yoruba are not likely to follow Tinubu to vote for Buhari, they are likely to jump into SDP,” he said.
Ononuju stressed that the quest to stop Buhari has thickened because Buhari has allegedly abandoned the Nigerian project and sidestepped the directional principle of the state policy with regards to the Nigerian Project by allegedly conniving with the foreigners to slaughter Nigerians.
He added that Buhari has come to typify a “mistake” Nigerians made in 2015, saying “as a human society we will correct ourselves and move on. We have been challenged before and we moved on.”
He sounded confident that despite the alleged desperation of President Buhari to “cling” on to power, he will fail.
In the cabal of ex- generals, Obasanjo is said to be the most senior according to an insider, who named the other members working arduously to remove Buhari as former Head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar, former National Security Adviser (NSA) Aliyu Gusau, while other ex-military men will act as their subordinates in collaboration with aggrieved politicians.
He added that the alliance is already thick.
To this end the National Chairman of the National Unity Party (NUP), Perry Opara, who led a delegation of the West African Association of Political Parties (WAAPP) to a meeting with Obasanjo, told BDSUNDAY that Obasanjo had both the local and international clout to dislodge President Buhari from power in 2019.
“Recall that Obasanjo and Babangida had taken turns to write President Buhari detailing his shortcomings and slamming him for the poor state of the Nigerian economy and his alleged lame-duck approach to the increasing violent killings across the country allegedly perpetrated by the Fulani herdsmen. Danjuma was even more furious and blunt when in an unprecedented outburst recently, he accused the military of colluding with the killers to devastate the indigenous people of Nigeria. He also urged the citizens to defend themselves, alleging that if the indigenous people rely on the military, “they will die one by one,” Opara said.
The ex-generals are said to be unhappy that Buhari allegedly divided Nigerians along religious, regional and ethnic lines with his alleged nepotism. They have unanimously agreed that the nation is facing existential threat of invasion from outside and the man saddled with the responsibility is “fiddling while the nation burns,’’ and therefore, cannot be allowed to ruin the nation they fought hard to keep united.
But President Buhari has since refused to surrender his ambition which he is constitutionally entitled to. Although the President has refused to join issues with Obasanjo, his media aides have said that Nigerians remain the only people who can determine his fate in 2019 and not self-styled former leaders, who have failed to appreciate the good works the President is said to be doing.
Innocent Odoh, Abuja
