Garba Shehu: Buhari Is Ahead Of Obasanjo In All Fields Of National Development

Former President Obasanjo is so well known to all that no one needs to describe who he is.

But, four things we will like to say:

One is that he will not stop attacking President Muhammadu Buhari because the former President won’t stop being jealous of anyone who beats him to a new record in the nation’s development process.

President Buhari is ahead of Chief Obasanjo in all fields of national development and to do that is cardinal sin to Obasanjo whose hallucinations tell him that he is the best ever to lead Nigeria and there will never be another one better than him.

President Buhari just completed the world class edifice that is the Second Niger Bridge after three decades of failed promises. It is now awaiting commissioning.

Obasanjo laid the sod for the bridge in his first term as elected President and work never started.

When he sought re-election for his second term in office, he returned to the site to turn the sod for the bridge the second time. When the Obi of Onitsha, forthright and scholarly, reminded him that he had done this in the past, Obasanjo told the foremost Southeast traditional ruler that he was a liar, in the full presence of the Chiefs and Oracles in his palace

Obasanjo lied to the Southeast to get their votes. President Buhari didn’t get their votes but built the bridge because he believed it is the right thing to do.

Two, President Buhari had been bagging awards and encomiums for trying to do that which the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria says a leader should do: serve one, or a maximum of two terms and go.

President Buhari has been stating and restating that he will supervise a better election than the one that brought him to office and to leave as and when due.

Having tried tenure elongation and failed, Obasanjo’s fictitious mind must be telling him that he is the one under attack.

But he is not on President Buhari’s radar because experience has shown, especially lately in West Africa where there have been at least three successful coups and many other failed attempts, that third term or tenure elongation is a recipe for political instability.

Furthermore, the totality of African leaders appointed President Buhari the Anti-Corruption Champion of the continent.

You can’t be an anti-corruption champion if “you meddled and bent the rules,” carrying the putrid responsibility of what happened to national assets in the name of privatization as documented by the Nigerian Senate in 2011.

As an insight, the Aluminum Smelter Company of Nigeria, ALSCON, which was set up with $3.2 billion, was sold to a Russian firm, Russal, for a paltry $130million. Delta Steel, which was set up in 2005, at a cost of $1.5billion, was sold to Global Infrastructure for just $30million

As President, Obasanjo destabilized internal democracy by orchestrating impeachment after impeachment of governors who were not compliant with his highly imperial administration.

As we said sometime back, Mr. Obasanjo’s tenure, 1999-2007, represented the dark days of Nigeria’s democracy due to a slew of assaults on the constitution.

The former president deployed federal machinery to remove governors Joshua Dariye, Rashidi Ladoja, Peter Obi, Chris Ngige and Ayo Fayose from office. They were the then governors of Plateau, Oyo, Anambra, Anambra and Ekiti, respectively, unjustly removed using the police and secret service under his control.

Garba Shehu