…Neither APC Nor PDP can salvage Nigeria
By Ayo Kehinde
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has once again criticised President Muhammad Buhari’s All Progressives Congress, APC, led -government for its failure to fulfil its campaign promises to bring welfare and security to Nigerians after three years in office.
Urging the government to stop the blame game and accept that it has failed to do what it was elected into office to do-solving the social and economic challenges it met on the ground-, Obasnajo charged Nigerians, particularly voters in the coming 2019 polls, to embrace other better focused and well-meaning political parties apart from the ruling APC and opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP
Obasanjo made the statement at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta, Ogun State, while receiving a joint delegation of the Nigeria Young Professionals Forum (NYPF) and the New Nigeria 2019 Group, led by the convener, Chima Anyaso, in company with Moses Siasia.
He said: “What those I call power addicts would want to do is to divide you based on gender, age, tribe, religion and region. You have one commonality – interest of Nigeria. And it doesn’t matter where you come from. We had that interest. “The truth is this: when you have an ineffective and incompetent government, we are all victims. And don’t let anybody deceive you.
“Those of you who are in business, your business could have been better today if we have a competent and effective and performing government.
“As I said, stop giving excuses; we met challenges. If there are no challenges, then we wouldn’t need you to come. You came in because you know there are challenges and then giving us excuse that you have many challenges, that is why you haven’t achieved results. And then you still want to go.
“The first lesson I learnt in my military training is never reinforce failure. What we have now is failure. Never you reinforce failure. Let failure be failure.
“And if you do not see what you should see, you will then be a victim of what you don’t like because it’s only when you see what you should see and you do what you should do that you put away what you do not like. And if you don’t see what you should see and you don’t do what you should do, you will be a victim of what you don’t like.
“What those I call power addicts would want to do is to divide you based on gender, age, tribe, religion and region. You have one commonality – interest of Nigeria.
“This time, for us to make it, we need all hands on deck. You see, I have publicly said and I mean it, that as a party, neither PDP nor APC can get us there as they have been. Never mind about reforms and apology and all that. And yet we have to get there. “I asked one of the foundation members of PDP, that when we started, was it a grassroots party? He said it was an elitist party. Really, we have never had the so-called grassroots party. Even NEPU which we could say is the nearest was not grassroots enough.
“And I believe strongly that we must have a strong popular grassroots movement to bring about the change, sustainability and stability that we need in our democracy and development.
“But let us bring together all these movements because we are pursuing the same thing. If we allow ourselves to be taken piecemeal, it is finished. “Yes, I said you cannot take PDP as it is and APC as it is; but they are not all made of evil people. There are good people among them. I said PDP is leprous hand, APC is leprous hand, but there are some clean fingers in them.
“So, let’s take those clean fingers in them and graft the clean fingers in our own. That is the way to go and if we go that way, we will get there, we will move together, and we will will move fast and we will move far.”
In a swift reaction, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, said this in an interview monitored on Channels Television, that the Presidency would keep mum.
He said the Presidency stands by the first reaction by Minister of Information and Culture to Obasanjo’s letter in February to Buhari, urging him not to contest the 2019 polls. Mohammed had said in his reply that OBJ was too busy to take notice of the government’s giants strides in the areas of anti-corruption, security and economic development.
“President Muhammadu Buhari will not take issue with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. One, President Obasanjo was his superior in the military,” Adesina said, adding, “President Buhari was made a minister under him during the military regime. So, President Buhari will never take issue with him.
“Two, what President Obasanjo has just said is not different from what he said in his letter of January 23; and adequate response was given to that letter by the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
“So, the response the minister gave to that letter suffices to whatever President Obasanjo has just said.”
