Both the presidency and All Progressives Congress have replied to former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s comments on the Buhari administration, calling him a “divider in chief” and demanding he account for N16billion spent on power during his administration.
It comes after Obasanjo delivered a paper titled “Moving Nigeria away from tipping over” in which he said the country was drifting into a “failed and divided” state under Buhari.
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A presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, who reacted to the remarks from Obasanjo, described the utterances as “unfair attacks on President Buhari and his administration”.
Shehu said the statement of former President was an attempt to divide the nation while President Buhari continues to promote nation building and the unity of Nigeria.
He said the recent speech in which President Buhari advised West African Presidents against tenure elongation beyond constitutional limits had been consistent with his long held views on the need to adhere to the rule of law.
The presidential aide expressed hope that Chief Obasanjo would once again sheathe the sword and rest what he called “the pretentiousness about the Messiah that has (mis)led him to pronounce often wrongly, as he disastrously did in the 2019 elections, about the life and death of Nigerian governments.”
He advised the former President to get involved with problems solving in accordance with his mantra as a statesman instead of helping “the mushrooming of a poisonous atmosphere of ethnic and religious nationalism.”
N16 billion spent on power
Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress asked Obasanjo to account for N16 billion power spending during his reign.
The party also asked former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to account for the sale of national assets during the privatisation programme of their administration.
Obasanjo and Atiku won a joint ticket as President and Vice President and governed the country from 1999 to 2007.
But reacting in a statement on Sunday, the APC Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Yekini Nabena, said political actors who allegedly midwifed national rot can’t chart the way forward for the country.
“It is baffling that the same political actors that midwifed and institutionalised the national rot, corruption, impunity and eroding of our value systems are the same characters posing as voices on the way forward in our national life. How ironic!
“Former President Olusegun Obasanjo could start with telling us where the electricity is despite $16billion he spent on the power sector.
“Obasanjo’s deputy, Alh. Atiku Abubakar should account for the privatisation exercise under his watch which saw national assets sold off to friends and cronies with no benefit to the country.
“Successive PDP administrations can also start by accounting for the trillions stolen from our national coffers in the guise of a fraudulent fuel subsidy regime,” the APC said.
But reacting, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan demanded the APC – led government to account for the “tax payers’ money” they claimed to have been using in servicing moribund refineries in the country.
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