Purge yourself of contempt for others, group advises OBJ

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has been advised to purge himself of contempt for his successors. In a statement on the heels of Obasanjo’s advice to President Muhammadu Buhari not to run for re-election in 2019, the Buhari Media Support Group (BMSG) said OBJ’s “unsolicited missive” was curious and worrisome.


In the statement signed by its chairman, Austin Braimoh, BMSG wondered why the former President always found fault with each and every of his successor in office, noting that “what is apparent in the unbecoming admonitions inherent in Obasanjo’s letters to his successors is a base exhibition of his self importance and a rather, narrow perception of governance and its concomitant service delivery to the majority of Nigerian people.”

According to BMSG “the reasons adduced by the former president in calling on President Buhari not to run is a lowly, pedestrian generalization, lacking in-depth analysis of the country’s national challenges, perennial contradictions and limited historical economic outlook. We expected a better and insightful dissection of the state of the nation from a man that had administered this country at the highest possible level twice.

“What we observed in Chief Obasanjo’s ‘roadside’ scorecard of the Buhari administration is a haste to once again flaunt his Messianic complex as both political aggregator and moral compass. We, however, find this desperation to aggregate national sentiments as a lowly expropriation of the inalienable right of the mass of Nigerian people to decide and determine who lead them at every point in time.

“We should remind Chief Obasanjo that the Nigerian mass are educated and politically sophisticated and discerning enough to evaluate the capacity and capabilities of the government to deliver on the mandate they freely gave the same government in 2015. It is definitely not in the place of Chief Obasanjo to accuse President Buhari of nepotism, Nigerians still remember vividly how he promoted his biological daughter and other hangers-on through government at all the different tiers of government.

BMSG argued that Chief Obasanjo should not question the anti corruption fight of the Buhari administration, noting that “this is the first time since 1985 that the country is witnessing an all-inclusive and encompassing fight against former and serving corrupt government officials and their collaborators. We can only encourage President Buhari to do more.

“Rather than harass, by subterfuge, President Buhari from running for a deserved second term, we implore Chief Obasanjo to publicly declare his preference for the presidential election 2019. This is what is required of a statesman worth his salt”, the group said.