After months of berating the
administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, former President Olusegun
Obasanjo has declared his support for the presidential candidate of the
All Progressives Congress, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).
Obasanjo, who is a member of the Peoples
Democratic Party, made his opinion known during an interview with the
Financial Times at the launch of his controversial autobiography titled,
‘My Watch’, in Nairobi, Kenya.
Obasanjo said Buhari, who ruled Nigeria
between December 1983 and August 1985, was aware of the challenges of
Nigeria today and was qualified to rule the country.
He said, “The circumstances he (Buhari)
will be working under if he wins the elections are different from the
one he worked under before, where he was both the executive and the
legislature – he knows that. He is smart enough. He is educated enough.
He’s experienced enough. Why shouldn’t I support him?”
Obasanjo said he was confident that Buhari would be able to effectively tackle corruption and insecurity.
The former President said Buhari would
restore the morale of the military which, he said, was needed in the
fight against terrorism.
He said President Goodluck Jonathan betrayed the armed forces by allowing corruption to undermine their operations.
He said, “It is a question of leadership
– political and military. I think you need to ask Jonathan how he let
the army go to this extent. Many things went wrong: recruitment went
wrong; training went wrong; morale went down; motivation was not there;
corruption was deeply ingrained; andwelfare was bad.”
Obasanjo added that he was saddened by
the rate at which the nation’s resources were dwindling, adding that
when he left office, Nigeria had $45bn in its reserve but the resources
had been depleted by more than half despite the increase in oil prices.
Reacting to the postponement of the
elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission for security
reasons and a better distribution of Permanent Voter Cards, Obasanjo
said he hoped the Federal Government was being truthful.
He urged Jonathan to put the interest of the nation ahead of his own ambition.
He said warned that manipulating the
electoral process could lead to a coup d’etat, adding that the May 29
handover date remained sacrosanct.
“I sincerely hope that the President is
not going for broke and saying ‘look dammit, it’s either I have it or
nobody has it’. I hope that we will not have a coup. I hope we can avoid
it,” he said.
