A week after he rated President Goodluck Jonathan’s performance as ‘below average’, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo has again launched a verbal missile at the present administration, saying its actions put Nigeria’s democracy at great risk.
Speaking at a book launch in honor of the pioneer chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offenses Commission, ICPC, Justice Mustapha Akanbi (retd.) at the Sheraton Hotels and Towers, Abuja on Wednesday, Obasanjo, who was Chairman of the occasion advised Mr. Jonathan to stop encouraging “verbal violence, which may not physically hurt, but has ways of degenerating into physical violence”.
The former president, who warned that the greatest undoing of any administration would be the attempt to destroy opposition of all sorts, which invariably means destroying democracy, said: “Management of democracy without resorting to brute force and dictatorial tendencies must be cultivated”.
He continued: “As a leader, you must not deliberately do evil or condone evil. You should know that you will one day give account to God; you may cover up here, but before God, there is no cover up”.
Mr. Obasanjo also took on the administration in other areas such as the handling of the ravaging Boko Haram insurgency, corruption, the economy and youth unemployment.
According to him, Boko Haram is not out to “frustrate anyone’s political efforts” and lamented that it took President Jonathan years to fully grasp the motive of the insurgents.
On corruption, perceived to have grown to unimaginable proportions under the present dispensation, the ex-Nigerian leader simply said: “When the head is rotten, the whole body is useless”.
On state of the economy, Chief Obasanjo said Nigeria would continue to sink deeper and that the federal government is not telling Nigerians the whole truth about the state of the economy.
According to him, “the economy is in doldrums, if not in reverse”.
As of the time of publishing this report, the Presidency is yet to respond to Mr. Obasanjo’s latest statement.
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