DEMOCRACY AMBASSADORS OF NIGERIA
29/31 OBAFEMI AWOLOWO WAY, IKEJA LAGOS.
TELEPHONE 08023172694, 08034009224 & 08033027702
OPEN LETTER TO NIGERIANS, PARTICULARLY YOUNG NIGERIANS, SHINE YOUR EYES
RE: OBASANJO “MY APPEAL TO ALL NIGERIANS, PARTICULARLY YOUNG NIGERIANS” AS AN ACT OF NOTORIOUS MISCHIEF BY A DEGENERATE, PREDATOR, PATHOLOGICAL LIAR AND SADIST
As active players in the Nigeria democratic process before the advent of 4th Republic in 1999, we owe it a national duty to make our views known on the latest letter addressed to Nigerians, particularly young Nigerians by a former military head of state and President of the federal republic of Nigeria Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as we march to the 2023 general elections in February/March 2023 in order that Nigerians and particularly young Nigerians are not misled by a man who is simply put, an enemy of progress in words and deeds.
We would have ignored the letter as the usual antics of a man whom God has been so generous to but who is widely known as an “alaimore Olorun” meaning an “unthankful being to God” who at every point in time in our national life, attempts to mischievously and hypocritically play God which he cannot and will never be. An unworthy beneficiary of God’s benevolence.
But we have decided to add our voices to General Obasanjo’s letter because of the catalogue of contradictions and lies contained therein in it which he purposely set out just to confuse particularly young Nigerians who might not be abreast of the age long anti-democratic and anti-people credentials of the tyrant known as Chief Obasanjo.
We have observed over the years that this former President who gained notoriety for distorting facts, peddling lies, engaging in campaign of blackmail and calumny against everybody but himself, sees himself as a Saint, a god who should be worshipped when in actual fact, he represents the darkest and wished to be forgotten part of Nigeria’s history.
In this latest letter, Obasanjo attempts to play the ostrich and sway misguided and gullible Nigerians to hold President Mohammad Buhari’s administration solely responsible for our economic situation by using expletives to masquerade his personal anger and frustrations against a government he grudgingly supported in 2015 but which refused to be tele-guided and god fathered by Obasanjo who quickly became a sworn enemy of the PMB’s government because of bruised ego and interest and returned back to the same party (PDP) he publicly tore his membership card and denounced, made a 360% turn to support and endorse an Atiku Abubakar of the PDP whom he had previously described as a thief in public fora and in his book, in the 2019 presidential election against the incumbent President Buhari. But to the glory of God, ex President Obasanjo & his endorsed candidate Atiku Abubakar both lule as President Muhammadu Buhari won the election convincingly.
In line with his anti-democratic credentials, ex-President Obasanjo even wrote a letter like the present mischievous one of assuming the role of our democratic compass and god in telling the sitting President not to run for a second term despite the fact that it was still within the democratic right of the incumbent as enshrined in our constitution. But Obasanjo was ignored as a rabble-rouser that he is and the incumbent President went on to contest and was re-elected for a second term overwhelmingly by Nigerians in 2019.
In this latest letter, General Obasanjo claimed to have interacted with the major contestants and that each of them claims to want to do, “What I did during my Presidency and take Nigeria back to where it was at the height of my Presidency and immediately after”. After reading this portion of the letter, we are forced to ask, which legacy of the ex-President does any of the major contestants want to emulate? We dare say that Obasanjo has no legacy worthy of emulation and any of the candidates who wish to emulate any of Obasanjo’s legacies is an enemy of Nigeria and democracy.
One hopes and pray that’s none of the major contestants will want to follow Baba Obasanjo Presidency’s despicable, reprehensible and condemnable footsteps of 1999-2007 that was characterized by irresponsibility, irresponsiveness, cruelty, crudity, impunity, lawlessness, corruption and abuse of power among other malfeasance that was his administration trademark. Baba Obasanjo is on record as the only Nigerian President who abused his office to personally purchase Transcorp shares in violation of his oath, but thank God the said shares were later confiscated by the EFCC under Mallam Nuhu Ribadu.
He also abused his office by coercing state governments, MDA’S, business conglomerates, etc to contribute to the building of his private library which was aptly described as Executive Extortion by Nobel Laureate Prof Wole Soyinka. Former Governor Fayose has recently come out to ask for the refund of the N10 million he was forced to contribute while he was Governor of EKiti state.
General Olusegun Obasanjo is also well remembered for abusing state power to illegally in violation of the constitution remove state governors at will. Governors who didn’t do his biddings like Joshua Dariye of Plateau state, Rashidi Ladoja of Oyo state, Ayo Fayose of Ekiti state, Dr. Chris Ngige of Anambra state, to mention but a few were all victims of Chief Obasanjo gangsterism Presidency. Who can forget how Baba Obasanjo abused his office to oversee the kidnap of a sitting Governor Chris Ngige of Anambra state and arsonists attack on public facilities by his chief political thug in that state? How can we forget how Obasanjo manipulated the removals of senate Presidents at will using state power as well as the recurring and threat to democracy removals of his party PDP National chairmen?
Baba Obasanjo Presidency massacre of innocent Nigerians in Odi (Bayelsa state) and Zaki Biam (Benue state) which led to the wanton displacement of thousands, destruction of properties apart from the killings is still fresh in our memory. We must also remind young Nigerians of this dictator in civilian administration order of shoot at sight on OPC members in Mushin and other parts of Lagos state which led to the extra judicial killings of hundreds of young Yoruba men by his army of death.
The litany of killings, unresolved assassinations of high profile Nigerians under the watch of Obasanjo among whom were his Attorney General and Minister for justice Chief Bola Ige, South South politicians Chief Harry Marshall, Chief A. K. Dikibo, a former senatorial candidate of defunct ANPP Uche Orji, Arc. Layi Balogun, former VC of UNN Nsukka Prof Chimere Ikoku, former Anambra state NBA chairman Chief Barnabas Igwe and his wife, Chief Victor Nwankwo of Fourth Dimension publishers and Chief Funso Williams in Lagos, etc, can never be forgotten in our socio political history.
Baba Obasanjo in the letter said he is pained that most of the contestants for the 2023 Presidency do not realize that Nigeria of today has been dragged down well below Nigeria of the beginning of his presidency in 1999. This is nothing but a big lie and a figment of the imagination of a mischievous and wicked elder who wants to take advantage of the ignorance of a gullible few Nigerians who are in the same boat with him for political capital.
Preceding ex-President Obasanjo administration in 1999, Nigeria on June 12 1993 had conducted what was generally acclaimed as the freest and fairest presidential election in Nigeria history in which the winner late Chief MKO Abiola secured a pan Nigeria mandate that cut across ethnic and religious divide to the consternation of the evil regime of General Babangida which treasonably annulled the election because his interest of self-perpetuation in power had become jeopardized by the election outcome. Nothing compares to the strife, insecurity and division of Nigerians along religious and ethnic lines that the Babangida and Abacha juntas with the support and encouragement of treacherous elders like chief Obasanjo plunged Nigeria into between 1993- 1999 and which has remained with us till date sadly and regrettably.
It is important to place on record and remind Nigerians, particularly young Nigerians of the ignoble role of this Janus faced elder who supported the treasonable annulment of the June 12 1993 Presidential election by the Babangida junta for the simple reason that Abiola the winner was a Yoruba man who was likely to match and even surpass his record as a military head of state of Yoruba extraction. While his military colleagues like Generals Buhari and Theophilus Danjuma openly called for the de-annulment of the election and the declaration of the winner, General Obasanjo worked surreptitiously in support of the annulment and when all entreaties in cajoling MKO Abiola to surrender the peoples mandate had failed, he secretly went to Abiola in Abacha’s detention with a retinue of 34 traditional rulers to negotiate away the mandate, but were told off in unspeakable terms by the custodian of the June 12 1993 Presidential mandate for coming to negotiate in the confines of a detention gulag what was freely given by the Nigerian people at the polls.
It is also on record, that in continuation of his anti-democratic tendencies against the June 12 1993 people’s mandate, Chief Obasanjo went to Harare Zimbabwe in the heat of the struggle to reclaim the people’s mandate and told the whole world that late MKO Abiola was not the Messiah Nigerians were waiting for, as though he was endowed with the God given right to superintend and determine what Nigerians wanted democratically, what manner of insolence to our collective sensibility by this mischievous and treacherous elder? This treacherous anti-democratic act of chief Obasanjo infuriated Nigerians and all lovers of democracy worldwide and made Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka to pen an open article titled: “What Manner of Man” in which he revealed how as a UN observer at the AU conference in Abuja in 1991, late MKO Abiola came to his hotel suite and embarrassed him by prostrating that he should cease fire along with other democrats against the tyrant Olusegun Obasanjo bid for UN General Secretary position which Wole Soyinka and others including late Dr. Beko Ransome Kuti championed because according to the campaigners, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is an unfit and improper being for any position of responsibility. Prof. Soyinka said it was only when he promised to cease further attacks against the enemy of humanity aka Olusegun Obasanjo that he was able to make late MKO Abiola stand up, but he promised that the previous campaigns must continue so that humanity is not imperiled by this being and to the glory of God, Obasanjo’s aspiration collapsed.
We must also not forget how in the struggle to reclaim the peoples June 12 1993 presidential mandate by democratic forces, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo continued to work clandestinely against the mandate and democracy by proposing an interim government of national unity to be headed by his treacherous self as a way out of the political logjam, but knowing his antecedents, Ibrahim Babangida outsmarted the cunny old fox and appointed the late chief Ernest Shonekan as the head of ING, to be supervised and watched by another predator General Sani Abacha as minister of Defence, but who eventually overthrew the Interim government following a Lagos high court headed by Justice Dolapo Akinsanya declaration of the illegal contraption as null, void and unknown to the law on the 10th of November 1993.
In this letter, baba Obasanjo Mr. know it all, human god, stated that Nigeria has no business with insecurity, poverty, insurgency, banditry, unemployment, hunger, debt, division and disunity. Again, we make bold to state that Baba is only being clever by half.
We need to ask Baba Obasanjo if his self-acclaimed years in office turned Nigeria into an Eldorado in which some of the social ills that he has mentioned were absent? For the records, insurgency which today has taken another phase of banditry started under Saint Baba Obasanjo administration and it was his mishandling of the situation that deteriorated to the level it has assumed today together with kidnappings and killings which were very rife then.
Baba Obasanjo so desecrated our democracy that under his watch in connivance with Prof Maurice Iwu led INEC, electoral criminality and brigandage became the order of the day, but our democracy was saved his malfeasance through the courts which upturned his electoral frauds and birthed off circle elections for Ondo, Ekiti, Edo and Osun states gubernatorial elections. Baba Obasanjo publicly announced that the 2007 general elections will be a do or die affair and really it was as attested to by his successor late President Alhaji Umar Yar’adua who openly confessed in the face of facts of the electoral malfeasance by his predecessor which brought him into power and he began his tenure by putting in place machinery to correct the anomaly.
Again baba Obasanjo lied as in his character that by 70, he left the scene. He didn’t leave the scene; he was forced out as his evil plans against the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria failed due to eternal vigilance of Nigerians. Baba Obasanjo at 70 attempted to play a fast one on Nigerians through his dubious third term failed bid and was chased out of office even as he desecrated the hallowed chambers of the national assembly with Ghana must go bags of millions of naira to bribe legislators to amend the constitution for the extension of his tenure well beyond the statutory allowed two terms. Baba Obasanjo is on record as the first civilian President to bribe national legislators with millions of naira for self-perpetuation in our political lexicon and he stands condemned till eternity for this show of shame.
In openly endorsing Peter Obi which we acknowledge as within Baba Obasanjo’s democratic right, Baba did not deem it fit to enunciate the qualities of his preferred candidate whom he wants to sell to Nigerians apart from his statement that he is a needle that has a thread from North and South and may not get lost. What a shame that our mischief baba is acting true to type of advocating what he condemned in the same breadth. So to General Obasanjo the only quality that his preferred candidate who was a two term Governor of Anambra has to showcase to Nigerians of which baba is proud to endorse him on, is his being a needle with a thread that may not get lost? What a pity.
Baba Obasanjo also lied that Peter Obi has a young and able running mate with clean track record of achievement both in public and private life. This is a white lie that can be investigated and exposed by any discerning mind. Peter Obi running mate was chased out of the Senate by the electoral tribunal for rigging in the Kaduna North Senatorial constituency in 2011. Due to the petition of the actual winner who was rigged out by Prof Maurice Iwu led INEC, the tribunal ordered a recount of ballot papers and after the recount of ballot papers, the original winner Makarfi polled 364,801 votes, while the rigger who was initially declared winner Ahmed Datti polled 356, 579 votes. So we ask Nigerians especially the young Nigerians, is it this kind of election rigger that baba Obasanjo wants to pull wool over your eyes and is projecting as someone with a clean track record of achievement both in public and private life? Well, the ball is in your court.
Baba Obasanjo’s candidate Peter Obi going by his antecedent of dismal performance in office as Anambra state governor for two terms of eight (8) years has shown time and time again even in public engagements, that he is unfit, unprepared and lacks the intellectual capacity, competence, capability, conviction, courage and vision to lead a country, not to talk of a multi ethnic nationality country like Nigeria. Peter Obi is a no no for the Presidency of over 200 million people most populated Black Country on earth.
We, at Democracy Ambassadors of Nigeria have examined all the candidates for the Presidency of Nigeria in 2023 and only Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Senator Kashim Shettima stands head and shoulder above the rest because of their antecedents of service in previous offices held and their manifesto of what they will do if elected into office which is endearing and open for interrogation by the electorate.
We hereby call on all Nigerians, particularly young Nigerians to shine their eyes very well and not be taken for a ride by a self serving endorsement of a needle with a thread candidate but to be prepared to go all out on election day to elect only a candidate who has a track record of performance, competence, courage, capacity, capability and vision as demonstrated only by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Distinguished Senator Kashim Shettima of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for Renewed Hope for a peaceful, progressive and prosperous Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Nigerians, the ball is in our court.
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Thanks.
Yours Sincerely,
Nelson Ekujumi, Deola Olayiwola
Convener Co-Covener.
Peter Claver Oparah,
Co-convener
