Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has again fired a salvo at President Goodluck Jonathan, stating that Nigeria’s democracy remained at risk due to the action of the present administration.
Obasanjo who spoke at a book Launch in honour of the pioneer chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC, Retired Justice Mustapha Akanbi, in Abuja, said the president should stop encouraging ‘verbal violence which may not physically hurt but has ways of degenerating into physical violence’.
Obasanjo said the greatest indictment against any administration is to be seen trying to destroy opposition of all sorts which invariably mean destroying democracy.
“Management of democracy without resorting to brute force and dictatorial tendencies must be cultivated.”
“As a leader, you must not deliberately do evil or condone evil. You should know that you will one day give account to God, you may cover up here, but before God, there is no cover up,” Obasanjo said.
The former president who also spoke at lenght on the President’s handling of the Boko Haram insurgency, corruption, the economy and youth unemployment, said Boko Haram is not out to “frustrate anyone’s political efforts” and lamented that it took Jonathan three years to fully understand the menace.
On corruption, Obasanjo said, “when the head is rotten, the whole body is useless” and said Nigeria would continue to sink deeper and that what Nigerians are told about the state of the economy “is not truly what the economy is”. “The economy is in doldrums, if not in reverse,” he said.
Obasanjo’s latest attack on the President is coming seven days after he rated Jonathan’s performance as below average while addressing book writers as part of activities marking the Ake Arts and Book Festival in Abeokuta.
The presidency responded on Sunday, slamming Obasanjo and describing his rating as untrue and misleading.
In a statement in Abuja, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Doyin Okupe, said Obasanjo’s rating was at variance “with the facts on the ground”.
Okupe said President Jonathan had performed so well that “in terms of performance and achievements, no administration since 1960 when Nigeria gained independence from Britain, has done as much as that of President Jonathan”.
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