By Sam Eyoboka
WARRI— Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, yesterday, blamed the
incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan for allowing the Islamic sect,
Boko Haram, to grow into a monster that is now uncontrollable by his
failure to act on a report submitted to the government.
President Olusegun Obasanjo
The former president who spoke at a lecture delivered by Professor Bolaji Akinyemi to mark the 40
th anniversary
of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor’s call to ministry at the Word of Life Bible
Church, Warri in Delta State, also tasked Nigerians to choose between a
strong leader who might adopt unusual approach to tackle a problem or a
weak leader who will leave the problem to fester.
Answering a question from a pastor from Borno State on how he could
forge any form of unity with those who are perpetuating violence in the
northern part of the country, Obasanjo went emotional, saying: “Boko
Haram is an ill wind that blows nobody no good.”
He proceeded to narrate his experience when he went on a fact-finding
mission to Borno State which was regarded as the base of Boko Haram.
He said: “They Boko Haram stated their grievances and I promised to
relay them to the authorities in power, because that was the best I
could do. I did report. But my fear at that time is still my fear till
today. When you have a sore and fail to attend to it quickly, it festers
and grows to become something else.
“Whichever way, you just have to attend to it. Don’t leave it
unattended to. On two occasions I had to attend to the problem I faced
at that time. I sent soldiers to a place and 19 of them were killed. If I
had allowed that to continue, I will not have authority to send
security whether police, soldier and any force any where again. So, I
had to nip it in the bud and that was the end of that particular
problem,” he said.
He was, however, careful to admit that all problems might not require
that kind of treatment. According to him, “if you say you don’t want a
strong leader who can have all characteristics of leaders including God
fearing, then have a weak leader and the rest of the problem is yours.”
He argued that “the beauty of democracy is that power rests in the
people, and every elected person would seek your votes to come back; if
you don’t want him, he won’t come back. He noted that people had been
saying that he brought President Goodluck Jonathan but what they have
failed to admit is that he didn’t give all the votes that brought the
man to power.
The erstwhile president therefore charged Nigerians to stand up and
take their destinies in their own hands, reminding them of a Yoruba
adage, “if you say it the way it is, you will die; if you don’t say
anything at all, you will die, why don’t you say it and die?”
Akinyemi blasts former leaders
Earlier in his lecture, titled: “The Nigeria of my Dream: Towards the
consolidation of national unity”, Professor Akinyemi had, among others,
said emphatically that the way we can have a consensus in the country
is to have a national conference.
The former External Affairs Minister was appalled by the hypocrisy
shown by ex-presidents and ex-heads of state who had continued to preach
what they did not practice while they were in office. “How does one
explain revelations that from 1960, outflow of funds from Nigeria had
got worse and yet the sanctimonious speeches about anti-corruption
continue to rent the air,” Akinyemi asked, arguing that current attempts
to amend the constitution would not solve the socio-political problems
troubling the nation.
According to him, “we will continue to amend the constitution and
further amend and there will be no solution until we all agree to sit
down at a round table to write a constitution that Nigerians can truly
identify with.”
The professor had argued that if, “at independence in 1960, the
political elite had reached a broad consensus on the fundamental values
that should be the overriding principles of governance in order to make
life more abundant for all, to cater for the poor, to increase
opportunities for all, to provide safety net for the widow and the
orphan and to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, between the
North and the South and between the haves and the have nots, they would
have laid a solid foundation for stability in Nigeria.”
Obasnjo oppose SNC
But Chief Obasanjo disagreed with the argument people had often
preferred to canvas for a sovereign national conference, saying there
would be no room big enough to accommodate every Nigerian at a
roundtable conference to find a national consensus, noting that he would
rather want to see a Nigeria where justice, fairness and equity reign
supreme.
“Only a mad man will fail to acknowledge that there is high level
corruption in the country”, he said, stressing that the same World Bank
that is always releasing figures about Nigeria’s poor state of economic
condition, recommended a structural adjustment programme for the nation
and nearly all the eggheads in the country bought it even when the
political leaders at the time said it would be detrimental to the
nation.
Obasanjo argued that the World Bank had been talking about corruption
in the country and “I challenged them to tell me the names of the
Nigerians who had stashed monies abroad but they were not forthcoming
except for the case of the Abacha loot. We recovered a large chunk of
that loot and they told us there was still over $1 billion from that
family but my successors did not pursue any further.
SAP made us poorer — OBJ
“What I am saying is that it is the same World Bank that came to us
with structural adjustment and some of us said it would make us poorer,
you (Akinyemi) were in government at the time. We went for structural
adjustment and we were poorer. And then they came up with an excuse that
we didn’t do it the way they wanted us to do it. Many years later, they
accepted that we were right and they were wrong,” Obasanjo stated.
Emphasising the need to tackle corruption in the country, the ex-head
of state narrated an experience he had in Anambra State, saying the
government signed a contract for turnkey project for carpets for $10
million, the money was paid but no job done and when I asked they
referred me to the terms of the contract.
“I called World Bank, they said go and look at the agreement, and the
agreement says they are not responsible for how the money is spent. The
Word Bank then told me that is the agreement and there is nothing we
can do.
“I don’t say that we are not corrupt, we are. But are we doing
something about it? Once, people said, the fear of Ribadu is the
beginning of wisdom. Then what happened to Ribadu? Then there was no
longer any wisdom,” he stated.
Obasanjo also disagreed with Akinyemi on federal character. While the
political science professor wants the nation to dump federal character
as a means of choosing leaders, Obasanjo was of the opinion that every
nation of the world has its own peculiar way of addressing its peculiar
problems.
“I don’t see anything wrong with federal character if we want to
wedge this country together because if you want to enter a place where
there are 40 people and they require somebody and you are Urhobo and at
the back you find somebody speaking Urhobo, the tendency is for you to
go for that man. It’s natural. So there is some form of security in the
application of federal character,” he said.
On the location of strategic and military assets which the lecturer
argued are located on the Zaria-Kaduna axis out of mutual suspicion, and
recommended that the nation must adopt the South African model of
locating military formations across the nation, Obasanjo said: “If you
look at the deployment of troops and formations in the country, it is
fairly well spread.
“When I joined the army, there were five battalions, Enugu, Abeokuta,
Ibadan and two were stationed in Kaduna. That was done by the colonial
masters. Immediately after independence, our political leaders decided
that there must be a battalion in Jos, Lagos, but as at today after the
civil war there is a battalion in Warri and some other places.
“When we were doing that, we took into account the strategic interest
of this country and don’t forget that there are certain types of
trainings that you can get in certain parts of the country,” he pointed
out.
Obasanjo, Akinyemi and the two other discussants including Elder
Gamaliel Onosode, and Prof. Jim Omatseye extolled the virtues of Pastor
Oritsejafor, praying that the 40 years he had spent in ministry would be
like the 40 years of tutelage of Moses.“Your achievements in the last
40 years must be regarded as mostly time of preparations and now you are
beginning again. Those of your flock who love you and believe in you
will be with you all the way through,” they said .
