Odilim Enwegbara is a Development Economist and
public analyst based in Abuja. In this interview, he,
amongst other issues, says why he feels former
president Olusegun Obasanjo does not want a
second term for President Jonathan even as
he calls Nigerians to support his quest for a
second term. Excerpts:
Many People have the impression that President
Jonathan’s government has the worst record on
economy, security amongst other issues. What is
your opinion?
First, let’s know who are these people you’re
referring to here? I think we should know who they
are and why they are drawing such a conclusion
because, I will assure you that those who are
saying this should be members of the opposing
parties — like APC, who have to turn facts upside
down so that they can win the presidential
election. As an economist and Nigeria’s economy
watcher, I will tell you that Jonathan administration
has so far outperformed his predecessors.
In fact,
Jonathan’s achievements in the last four years
remain far higher than Obasanjo’s eight years in
power which saw the worst infrastructure
decadence in Nigeria’s history, including leaving
us with less than 2000MW of electricity, road
networks only better than those in the war-torn
Somalia, and rotten state of our airports and
railways.
From what you are saying you must be one of
those calling for his reelection?
Let me say it here that I am not an active
politician. But instead I am an economist and
nationalist. I have been fighting for a just, peaceful,
fair, and equitable Nigeria. It’s a call for us, for our
children and their children for them to eventually
be proud of Nigeria. I want to say this because
there is a carefully constructed front wanting to
humiliate Jonathan out of office. This wouldn’t
even be imagined had Jonathan come from one of
the three major ethnic groups.
Remember how in 1993 Abiola was denied the
presidency of this country. What is happening to
Jonathan today is like what happened to Abiola in
1993 because Jonathan, a south-southerner is
being opposed because he’s not a westerner, or
northerner. There is no way the current effort to
humiliate him out of office would succeed.
What will you make of the refusal by APC
presidential candidate Gen Buhari to participate in
the presidential debates?
It is ironical that Gen. Buhari doesn’t want to
debate with President Jonathan. By so doing, he is
denying Nigerians the right to decide between him
and Jonathan who has what it takes to run the
affairs of the country.
Had the two debated, one of the questions should
have been if the two would be ready to subject
themselves to independent team of doctors to
ascertain their physical and mental state of health
given the tasking nature of the office of the
president of Nigeria. Also Buhari would have been
asked to explain to Nigerians why should someone
who overthrew a democratically elected
government now want to be democratically
elected? Shouldn’t that be sending the wrong
signals to today’s senior military officers who,
seeing how Buhari has been rewarded, could be
contemplating overthrowing government with the
hope that years later Nigerians could be rewarding
them too by electing them?
Obasanjo and Jonathan had been like father and
son. What, in your opinion led to their present
irreconcilable disagreements to the extent that
Obasanjo recently denounced the president
accusing him of having squandered the country’s
foreign reserves, without anything to show for it?
On Monday, he tore his PDP membership card and
ditched the party.
Besides geopolitical interests I just enumerated
above, Obasanjo hates rivalry. Particularly, he
hates to be alive and see any of his close
successors also become two-term presidents of
Nigeria like him. OBJ’s fears are fully
understandable especially given his determination
to be seen and called “Father of Modern Nigeria.”
That’s why the fear that should Jonathan too
become a two-term president of Nigeria,
Jonathan’s legacies could overshadow his and
most important rubish his political godfather
status in PDP. That is why OBJ never wanted GEJ
to become a two-term president of Nigeria.
If you look at all the attacks both locally and
internationally, you would discover that those
asking for Jonathan’s head have one affiliation with
Washington or another, including some of those
who have accused the president of not doing
enough to rescue the Chibok girls. They are not
doing what they are doing because they love the
Chibok girls but because this is part of strategy to
humiliate Jonathan out of office.
Are you saying that that is one of the reasons why
the US secretary of state, Mr. Kerry recently visited
and went as far as giving some marching orders to
our president?
The US Secretary of state came here to insult us
and our president when he said, “Let me make
myself clear…” as if talking to president of a US
colony. He has little or no respect for the Nigerian
people and their president, not even as a
sovereign nation.
He shouldn’t come here to give us a marching
order. I am sure there is no way Mr. Kerry could
have thought of talking to South African President
Jacob Zuma and the people of South Africa the
way he talked to our president; not even Ghana’s.
He talked down on us and got away with it
because Obasanjo and his foot soldiers have
cleared the way for Mr. Kerry. America should
apologize to Nigerians for the insult we received
from their chief diplomat.
What can you tell us about the falling oil prices?
No, the global oil plunge is not because of the so-
called shale oil. The truth is that the US national
security establishment working in collaboration
with Saudi Arabia has been manipulating oil prices
since the 1970s, thanks to the 1945 alliance
between President Roosevelt and King Saud, which
continues to guarantee US-Saudi powerful oil card
to be used against those they want to punish.
Therefore, the falling oil price is caused by their
joint manipulation .
While America is manipulating the oil price down
to punish Russia for ‘’invading’’ Ukraine, Saudi
Arabia is flooding the market with its cheap oil to
also punish Russia for supporting the Assad
regime in the Syrian civil war. This is a repeat of
the 1986 use of oil card as a weapon to
orchestrate the collapse of the Soviet Union, when
the two successfully manipulated the oil prices by
300 per cent downwards, which led to the eventual
collapse of the Soviet Union which was 80 per cent
dependent on oil export as its source of foreign
exchange.
Unfortunately, given how highly interconnected the
global economy has become, the current collapse
in oil prices is affecting the entire global economy.
Even the so-called major IOCs, from ExxonMobil to
Shell and to Chevron, as a result of the collapse in
oil prices, have opted to shut down production as
well as rollback critical investments in oil
exploration. It is to the extent that export-
dependent economies like China, India, Japan,
Germany, etc. are already feeling the impact of oil
price collapse since big time importing OPEC
nations are restricting importations.

Source:
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/02/why-obasanjo-does-not-want-2nd-term-for-jonathan-ewegbara/

wen gej refused to debate in 2011 why didnt u complain? a fool workng hard to impress his paymaster

when u pronounce eweagbara frm reverse it becomes agbaraewe( weed's power)

Confused pdp. They say the man is not relevant but they just can't stop talking about him. Doesn't Jonathan have anything interesting to say? Move on...

#change
#GMB
#APC