Senator Abdullahi Adamu (APC, Nasarawa West) has hit hard at former President Olusegun Obasanjo, saying that the former Nigerian leader is supposed to be in prison for allegedly perpetrating monumental corruption in office.
Adamu, a former governor of Nasarawa State (199-2007) on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), also faulted the anti-corruption war of President Muhammadu Buhari. He described the ongoing anti-graft war as selective, and such informed the reason Obasanjo was not committed to prison.
“Were the anti-corruption war of President Muhammadu Buhari total and blanket in nature, corrupt minded Nigerians like former President Olusegun Obasanjo is supposed to be cooling their feet in jail by now,” Adamu stated yesterday in Abuja at a press briefing.
The lawmaker, who was reacting to the recent letter issued by Obasanjo to Buhari on his performance in governance, said that he was in agreement with the former President’s submission that the anti-corruption war as presently being prosecuted, was selective, pointing out that Obasanjo was a beneficiary of the defective anti-corruption fight.
He said: “Chief Obasanjo said that President Buhari is selective in his anti- corruption war. I agree with him because if the President were not selective, Chief Obasanjo himself would be in the dock today on trial on charges of corruption arising from the corrupt practices in the pursuit of his third term gambit in the National Assembly in 2006.
“He (Obasanjo) knows as well as I and other leading members of the PDP he badly wanted it and initiated the process of constitutional amendment. He bribed each member of the National Assembly who signed to support the amendment, with the whopping sum of N50 million.
“The fresh mint money was taken in its original boxes presumably from the vaults of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and distributed among the legislators. “The money was not his, and it was not appropriated by the National Assembly as required by law. I, therefore, agree that in failing to make former President Obasanjo account for the money, President Buhari is waging his anti-corruption war selectively.
“Nor should we forget that President Buhari has also not bothered to interrogate Obasanjo’s role in the Halliburton scandal for which some Americans are cooling their heels in jail. Perhaps President Buhari might wish to look into the Siemens affairs in which the Obasanjo administration was indicted.”
Adamu, who was governor of Nasarawa State under Obasanjo, also discountenanced the former president’s low marks for Buhari’s government on economy and security, declaring that Buhari inherited most of the problems threatening the country, and not the making of his administration. “Every administration grapples with problems thrown at it by circumstances beyond its control. President Buhari inherited an economy that was unsteady on its feet.
“He also inherited the security problems such as Boko Haram, armed robberies and kidnappings. Yes, I agree that under his watch these problems should grow less, not more. But the solution to problems such as these is a slow and agonising process since he has no powers to simply make them disappear overnight,” he said.
The lawmaker, who was visibly infuriated, noted that Obasanjo nearly collapsed the system, claiming that his (Obasanjo’s) eight years in government almost ruined the hardearned democratic governance in Nigeria as a result of self-delusion and messianic mentality.
His words: “He waged his anti-corruption in a manner intended to rubbish all our reserved institutions such as the courts and the National Assembly in a way to be the only Nigerian without palm oil on his hands. “The courts quaked over his unconstitutional rampage. Chief Obasanjo left our democracy in a lurch.
He was like a wrecking ball. In 2007, he alone decided his successor in office contrary to the rules of the game, the repercussions and consequences of which are now history.” He further posited that the coalition Obasanjo started nurturing would not fly, saying that it would end as an exercise in political deception, stressing that if he didn’t desist from certain behavioural tendencies, he would end up being a national nuisance and irrelevant figure.
“His coalition for Nigeria is a red herring across supthe path of our constitutional government. He is free to form a political movement and pursue his ambition of being the power behind the throne, but such a national movement would achieve no discernible purpose in the economic management and the social administration of the country.
“I believe that Chief Obasanjo is too high and too big in the estimation of the people to permit himself the continued sickening indulgence in political skulduggery. I believe that the Nigerian people and the Nigerian state have been most kind to him.
“Chief Obasanjo has a moral obligation to make the country succeed in solving its myriads of problems. That, I believe, is one way he can give back to the country that has given him so much,” he stated.
He, however, said that similar reaction was not needed for the purported statement issued by former President Ibrahim Babangida since according to him, it was riddled in controversy of genuineness.