Politics

Buhari bears fangs, finally replies Obasanjo

Published

6 years ago

May 22, 2018

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President Muhammadu Buhari may have finally sent a subtle threat to former President Olusegun Obasanjo who in recent time has been a thorn in the flesh of Buhari’s second term bid.

Although, President Buhari didn’t mention Obasanjo’s name, but he was quoted to have said that a former president has questions to answer over the $16 billion power project when he hosted the Buhari Support Organisation (BSO) led by Hameed Ali, comptroller-general of the Nigeria Customs Service on Tuesday.

“You know the rail was killed and one of the former heads of state was bragging that he spent more than 15 billion American dollars on power. Where is the power? Where is the power?” he asked.

Recall that in 2008, the House of Representatives had described $16 billion spent on power by Obasanjo’s government as colossal waste, blaming it on “poor budget planning” and a lack of proper oversight by relevant bodies.

Also in 2016, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) urged Walter Onnoghen, chief justice of Nigeria, to appoint an independent counsel to investigate allegations of corruption in the spending of $16 billion on electricity by Obasanjo’s government.

“What have they been doing? Some of them have been there for 10 years, what have they been doing? I said it about eight years ago that we have no other country than Nigeria. We should remain here and salvage it together no matter what you have outside. Now we get some of the people with houses here and may be in Abuja or somewhere in America and Europe, they swear, some of them to God, that it doesn’t belong to them.

“But their accounts, through the banks, through their companies, it is their own. But they say it’s not their own. This is a terrible time and the people are saying what are we doing? Why can’t you lock them up? And again, I went on by telling them that when I was in uniform, younger and rather ruthless, I got from the president downward locked up.

“I said you’re guilty, except you prove yourselves innocent. I myself was locked up and those who misappropriated public funds were given back what they had taken away. Who did anything about it?

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo had written an open letter to Buhari sometimes ago, calling on him not to seek re-election in 2019 because his government had failed to meet the yearnings of Nigerians.

The former President has also been campaigning vigorously against the present administration, forming alliances on how to oust it out of power in 2019.