Issues currently
attracting comments in the Nigeria political space is the suggestion by General
Obasanjo to President Goodluck not to contest for 2015 general election on the
ground that he has not lived up to his campaign promises to Nigerians. Obj. revealed
that the president do not have the will nor the ability to fight corruption in
the country. He also pointed other facts including excessive abuse of power by
PDP national chairman but more importantly, massive oil thief that is and has
been going on in the Niger delta without any meaningful display of will by the
government to arrest the situation.
Without any prejudice,
almost all issues pointed by the former president is no longer news in Nigeria
as there is no new information in it that is not already in the public domain.
But the implication is that it only confirmed the views of other Nigerians.
However the questions now are: Was President Obasanjo regime better or
identical with what we have now? All these faults he pointed out, were they not
in existence during his regime? Why is illegal third term good for him and
legal second term not good for Jonathan? By the time we start to understand the
above questions, we will know that selfishness is always at the centre stage of
the views and ideas of our political leaders.
Before 2007 general
election, a man was singing praises of two politicians that he was positioning
to perpetually use to keep ruling Nigerians indirectly after third term bid
failed and he went ahead and single handedly imposed them as winners of
presidential general election on Nigerians even when local and international
election observers noted massive rigging of the election.
Now that things are no
longer going as planned for Obj., he has become an opposition to his former
close align accusing Jonathan of being or do not have the capability to deal
with the same issues that rocked is own administration. I don’t have anything
against Obj. but as they say, ‘before you remove a piece of wood from the eye
of another person, first check if you don’t have a log of same wood in your own
eye’. The only thing I can say that Obj. did better than Jonathan is on issues
bothering on fight against corruption though his fight was accused of being
directed only against perceived political enemies. But in other things, he is
as guilty as Jonathan.
How can a man that
single handedly imposed his choice of president on all Nigerians accuse
Jonathan of being authoritative with his handling of internal political issues
of PDP? Talking of free and fair election, Obj. presided over one of the worst
massively rigged election in Nigeria history. Is it on corruption, after
investing billions of dollars in electricity within 8years which was greater than
all the money that has been invested in the sector from 1960-1999, Obj. left us
with lower megawatts in 2007 than when he came into office in 1999.
Though am not a fan of
the current government, I see all of them as birds of the same feather that are
only interested in capturing power, using it for self reasons and fighting to
maintain power.
