Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has raised an alarm over the
insecurity in the country and called on the present leaders to tackle it
seriously.
Obasanjo who shared his thoughts on the state of the nation in an
interview with Y! Magazine described the current situation in the
country as toxic and called for a concerted effort to address it.
“We are in a situation in this country now, or if you like, in a
state of insecurity. It’s a toxic situation. It does not matter how much
blame on the leadership is unfair or unwarranted, the public won’t
support the leader,” Obasanjo noted.
He likened the situation in the country to a state of war, adding that there are many things wrong with the country.
“It’s like when a country is at war. Everything in the country must
be dear to us in the war. After you have done the war, you can now start
apportioning blame because there are many things going wrong in our
country. There will be something wrong with our country or any country
at any point. The question is how serious and what we are doing about
it- and in this case it is serious.” he said.
The two-time Nigerian leader also spoke on the tough decisions he had
to make as president of the country. He berated the former Speaker of
the House of Representatives, Alhaji Ghali Na’Abba for always
threatening him with impeachment.
“By now, Na’abba or whatever you call that character who took a lorry
to Abuja from Kano, became Speaker and was riding in strings of cars,
would have been known for impeaching me after many threats. I said if
this impeachment will come, let it come and I will go back to my farm
but what I will not accept, I will not accept,” Obasanjo said defiantly.
He described his biggest achievement in office as preventing the
break-up of the country. “I protected Nigeria from breaking up. When I
became elected president, many Nigerians did not think that Nigeria
would survive.
“For instance, there was still grief and a feeling of alienation by
the Igbos although the war had long ended; they had not felt that they
had fully reaped the benefits of the end of the war. Two, the Yorubas
generally were feeling bad about the situation of Abiola and the June 12
election. Three, the Niger Deltans essentially were feeling bad about
being rich and yet remaining very poor. Four, the Northerners were being
accused of monopolising power and each of these group were looking at
themselves and thinking, if the worst comes to the worst, they would go
it alone. Each of them was getting its own militants in one form or the
other; the OPC (O’odua People’s Congress) in the West, Egbesu in the
Niger Delta, and the Arewa People’s Congress (in the North).
“That was the situation and that’s what made people to believe that
after me, as president, there would be no other president again; that
Nigeria will disintegrate on my head. But that wasn’t the case, and you
cannot quantify what a huge achievement that was,” he stated.
No comments:
Post a Comment