Former
President Olusegun Obasanjo on Saturday said Nigeria has become too
solid as a country for any force, calamity or misgovernance to destroy
it.
Mr.
Obasanjo, who spoke exclusively to PREMIUM TIMES from Azerbaijan where
he is chairing a meeting of the InterAction Council of Former Heads of
State and Government, was responding to reports quoting him as saying
Nigeria would collapse if President Muhammadu Buhari is reelected to
office in 2019.
The
reports claimed that the former president made the comment in a speech
at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University, on Friday.
But
Mr. Obasanjo vehemently denied making the comment, saying he had not
even been to London since early January when he spoke on
transformational leadership in Africa at Oxford University.
“I
won’t and can’t say that (that Nigeria will collapse if Buhari is
reelected),” the former president said. “There will be nothing that will
make Nigeria collapse. When Nigeria did not collapse under a civil war,
it won’t collapse now.
“My faith and conviction about Nigeria is so strong that I don’t see the country either being dismembered or collapsing.
“The
worst has passed on Nigeria. Once we were able to survive the civil war,
once we are able to survive (Sani) Abacha, nothing can be worst than
those two. And our democracy is waxing strong. Although there are a few
things we need to get right.
“As
far I am concerned, the worst is over. What remains is for all of us and
for our leadership to show good faith and commitment to do what is
right. Then Nigeria will grow from strength to strength.”
When
reminded of his recent criticism of the Buhari administration for
misgovernance, corruption and ineptitude, Mr. Obasanjo said even those
administrative weaknesses were not enough to wreck Nigeria.
“I
regard those as aberrations and they will pass away,” the former
President said. “Such aberrations will pass away with the regime that
bring them.
“Don’t
forget that Abacha did more than that. Of course Abacha’s regime was
not a democracy, it was a military dictatorship. If we survived that,
then we will survive any shenanigan against democracy. That’s the
greatest advantage of democracy.”
Mr.
Obasanjo, who ruled Nigeria as a democratically elected president
between 1999 and 2007, supported Mr. Buhari to become president in 2015.
But on January 23, the former president released a 13-page statement calling on Mr. Buhari not to seek re-election in 2019.
In a
special press statement entitled, “The Way Out: A Clarion Call for
Coalition for Nigeria Movement” Mr. Obasanjo said Mr Buhari had
performed far below expectation and should honourably “dismount from the
horse” to join the league of the country’s former leaders whose
“experience, influence, wisdom and outreach can be deployed on the side
line for the good of the country.”
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