18 Critical Things Former President Obasanjo Said
About President Jonathan In His New Book
"In the area of corruption, we have been going
back steadily from the inception of Yar’Adua’s
administration when the ‘hunter’ became the
‘hunted’," Obasanjo states. "Under Jonathan we
seem to have gone from frying pan to fire. If in the
past corruption was in the corridors of power, it
would seem now to be in the sitting room, dining
room and bedroom of power."
BY SAHARA REPORTERS
DEC 09, 2014
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I n his scathing new autobiography, My Watch ,
former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo
made a series of critical assertions against current
President Goodluck Jonathan.
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Exclusive: Former President Obasanjo Defies Court
Order To Launch His Autobiography In Lagos
(Photos)
Due to the nature of the content, an ally of
President Jonathan attempted to use a court order
to block the publication of the book. President
Jonathan also personally contacted the former
president to appeal that the book not be published
until next year, after the 2015 presidential election.
Despite this My Watch launched yesterday, Dec. 9,
in Lagos, in the presence of prominent political
figures and officials.
Review of the three-volume text by
SaharaReporters noted that the elder statesman
holds nothing back, characterizing Mr. Jonathan as
weak, callous and incapable of managing Nigeria.
He also criticizes the handling of the Boko Haram
insurgency crisis, the PDP, and the Governors
Forum, among other things. Excerpts from some of
the most significant critiques are below.
On President Jonathan's character:
Jonathan is lacking in broad vision, knowledge,
confidence, understanding, concentration, capacity,
sense of security, courage, moral and ethical
principles, character and passion to move the
nation forward on a fast trajectory. Although he
might wish to do well, he does not know how nor
does he have the capacity to. To compound his
problem he has not surrounded himself with aides
sufficiently imbued with the qualities and abilities
to help him out. Most of them are greedy hangers-
on or hungry lacklustre characters interested only
in their mouths and their pockets
President Jonathan can still make amends to save
himself, many of his associates in government, his
government, and the nation. If, in the end, he fails
he will have no one but himself to blame. He has
great opportunities, many of which only come once
in a lifetime; and if he misses them it will only be
due to his inadequacy, myopia, personal interest
and self-aggrandisement, lack of sagacity, wisdom.
I hope he can and will avoid having any cause for
regret.
The longest period that I have met one-on-one
with the president was for one hour and ten
minutes. That whole time, the president talked
about nothing that was in the interest of Nigeria;
instead he kept pointing out his supposed
enemies and various matters that would not serve
his interests. I could not stop myself from blurting
out: “Mr. President, no Nigerian should be your
enemy. You have to rule over all of them whether
or not they like you. Please, you have to be like
rain falling on good and bad people alike.”
An elder statesman who formed a close
relationship with President Jonathan very early in
his presidency came to the conclusion, after six
months, that the president has not got what it
takes to lead. It was the same elder statesman
who reportedly tried to jolt the president into
action by telling him that there were five
presidents in Nigeria, and these were his wife the
first lady, Deziani, Oduah, Ngozi and the president
himself, and that he was the weakest of the five.
On corruption:
In the area of corruption, we have been going back
steadily from the inception of Yar’Adua’s
administration when the ‘hunter’ became the
‘hunted’. But under Jonathan we seem to have
gone from frying pan to fire. If in the past
corruption was in the corridors of power, it would
seem now to be in the sitting room, dining room
and bedroom of power.
If what is called ‘corruption’ is stealing, under the
watch of Goodluck Jonathan, then government has
become legalised and protected robbery.
The presidency had instructed EFCC to remove a
vital document in Gbenga Daniel’s file in their
custody, to assist getting Gbenga Daniel off the
hook. All these cases were reported to the
president and were known to him; but because
they involve the president’s interests, directly or
indirectly, no action has been taken.
With the 2011 elections, heavy financial prices
were paid to Lagos and Ondo State opposition
political leaders to secure the vote for the
president, against the interest of PDP at the state
level...The situation where the president
surreptitiously invited Bola Tinubu, lifting him at
night by presidential aircraft from Lagos to Abuja
to hatch a plan for Bola to support one PDP
presidential candidate at the expense of all other
PDP candidates for any office in Lagos, can only
be described as obscene, unethical, corruption-
ridden and a show of bad leadership...Whatever
amount of money was given to Bola Tinubu to
procure votes for the 2011 presidential election in
Lagos was, to say the least, unnecessary. What
made this phenomenon particularly bad was that
government had raised the money from
government transactions which fuel corruption.
I got a warning that this administration was
attempting to induce two of my daughters,
including Iyabo, to do a dirty job. I warned them
both against it, but because of her character, the
influence of her mother and her attitude, Iyabo
succumbed; the other daughter did not.
On the Boko Haram insurgency, the insecurity
crisis, and #BringBackOurGirls:
I was in Sierra Leone on the day Boko Haram
[bombed] the UN building in Abuja. As soon as I
returned to Nigeria I called the inspector-general of
police to hear his views on the issue. I was not
impressed with his explanation. I also talked to the
then national security adviser and his explanation
was substantially blank. I went to Jonathan, the
president, on the same issue. His reaction, and his
view that Boko Haram were ‘a bunch of riffraffs’ left
me even colder.
The one incident that overtly and graphically
exposed the ineptitude, ineffectiveness, inefficiency,
carelessness, cluelessness, callousness,
insensitivity and selfishness of Goodluck Jonathan
was the abduction of about 276 school girls from
Chibok in Borno State by Boko Haram. The
reaction and attitude of our president and his
household was non-belief, to the extent that 18
days passed before he grudgingly concede to
accept the reality of the abduction. If serious action
had been taken within 48 hours, the story could
have been different.
I was not surprised that the president went
dancing twenty-four hours after the Nyanya
explosion that took seventy-five lives. I also found
believable the statement allegedly credited to the
president after both the Nyanya explosion and the
Chibok school girls abduction to the effect that
since some people in the North had said that they
would make Nigerian ungovernable, they could
keep on killing and abducting each other.
If these girls are not released, it will be a big dent
on the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, and a
dark blot on Nigeria’s reputation and history; and,
for years and indeed decades, Nigeria will continue
to live with the agony and memory of the action
and inaction of leadership regarding the Chibok
school girls. But what is more, a bad precedent
would have been created; Boko Haram has tasted
blood and will always want more… Who knows,
another group of terrorists might have learned from
Boko Haram. This time it is Chibok; next time it
could be Ibogun or Otueke.
Vice-President Biden had categorically told
Jonathan during the African Summit in Washington
in August 2014 that with the state of his
governance and the level of the destruction of the
military, they would not be able to help Nigeria.
On PDP and party politics:
A political party, and its leadership, that condones
corruption and engages discredited people to
abuse and insult genuine, authentic and objective
critics is a political party on the path of ruin and
destruction. The PDP must be rescued from that
path, otherwise it will soon fade into history.
Criticism, particularly objective criticism, is an
indispensable element of democracy and a
democratic dispensation.
PDP would need to be brought back to being a
well-led, disciplined and respected, harmonious
party that can easily win elections, rule and
govern, and not one sacrificing the party’s interest
for personal gain, setting governors of the party
against each other, supporting candidates of other
parties against candidates of the party as it
happened in Lagos, Edo and Ondo States, and
harassing credible leaders of the party and seeking
to replace them with criminals and dubious
characters in order to further presidential interests.
On the Nigerian Governors Forum election crisis:
Two governors from the [PDP] - Liyel Imoke of
Cross River and Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta
States - and Godswill Akpabio from Akwa Ibom
State by himself, came to me in Abuja, appealing
to me to intervene in the situation of the
Governors’ Forum, particularly in the disagreement
within the PDP governors. Akpabio said starkly in
his frank and outspoken manner: “We have
messed up and don’t leave us alone. For me, I
don’t want to go to jail and my children are too
young. I will report our meeting to the President.”
Nobody, including President Jonathan, would like
to go to jail, and he knew he could, depending on
how things turned out or failed to shape from then
on.
I have always seen the Governors’ Forum as a
type of trade union as they behave that way most
of the time. [Jonathan] told the story of how Obong
Atta was relieved of his position as chairman and
Lucky Igbinedion was enthroned by less than fifty
percent of the governors, and of how Bukola Saraki
manoeuvred the Forum to serve his presidential
ambition.
http://saharareporters.com/2014/12/09/18-critical-things-former-president-obasanjo-said-about-president-jonathan-his-new-book

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