Ex-Senate president slams Obasanjo for criticising PDP

Obasanjo had, in a statement on October 12, said issues bordering on morality, principle and national commitment noticed in the PDP made him distance himself from affairs of its national body.
The former president had cited what he called Nigeria’s “pressing problems of  widening inequality, infrastructure, impunity, corruption, poverty and youth education, skill-acquisition, empowerment and employment” as part of his anger against the PDP.
But Ebute said in an open letter he wrote to Obasanjo yesterday that the latter’s criticism appeared to be the biggest self-indictment ever written by any Nigerian leader.
He said though he agreed that those problems ought to be firmly addressed by Nigerian leaders, it was unfortunate that Obasanjo had an unusual opportunity of making impact in those areas for three years as a military ruler and later eight years as a civilian president.
Ebute wrote: “Baba, if I may ask, what better definition of impunity can one have than the gale of orchestrated impeachments (some carried out with less than 10 legislators in hotel rooms) and serial violations of civil liberties orchestrated by you during your tenure as civilian president? “You will recall that the National Assembly, because of your unrelenting and undemocratic actions embarked on a process of impeaching you. It took the intervention of my humble self and few of other compatriots to save you and keep our nascent democracy on course. For this, you personally thanked me in writing!,” he said.   
He reminded Obasanjo of the Halliburton and Siemens scandals as part of his “legacies” to the nation’s corruption index stressing that the National ID card project which resulted in the Siemens scandal has been successfully undertaken by the Jonathan administration.
Ebute said that: “As typical of you Baba, you made superficial attempt to improve power supply in the twilight of your administration when you committed Nigeria to spending a colossal sum of $16 billion which was paid upfront to import gas turbines for the NIPP projects. You neither made plans whatsoever to evacuate the turbines from the ports, nor made provisions for the road infrastructural upgrade to transport them to the desired locations. No land was acquired for the installation of the imported turbines neither was a right of way for execution of the project acquired.”