When two elephants fight
By Chioma Gabriel
Interesting things are always cropping up in the polity from time to time. This time, the altercation between our dear president and a former president, Olusegun Obasanjo is not only zestful but enlightening. At least for once, President Buhari has said something that many Nigerians were interested in hearing.
The controversy surrounding the power project under President Obasanjo’s regime seemed to have been swept under the carpet for long. There have been questions from time to time but no answers. But now that President Buhari has spoken, what is going to happen next?
If the former president Olusegun Obasanjo, a prolific letter writer and a social commentator who would not spare anybody that messed up had defaulted at some point during his hay days in government, it is not too late to open up the file of the alleged squander mania involving $16 billion power project and starting an investigation on it.
If you are not familiar with what happened, I will refresh you.
Last week, President Buhari had accused the former president Olusegun Obasanjo of harvesting nothing out of the $16 billion allegedly expended on the power sector during his regime as president of the federal republic.
Buhari accused all three presidents of the Fourth Republic before him of wasting the years of plenty as no leader since Gen. Sani Abacha paid attention to the country’s infrastructure needs.
The president said the debt incurred from the $16 billion spent by Obasanjo on power without any output is now being paid by his administration and that his government, that is Buhari’s government, had made the highest capital allocations in the 2017 and 2018 budgets.
Don’t be surprised by the good words said about Abacha. Buhari said he agreed to work with him irrespective of people’s perception about the late dictator because, during his military regime, a lot of roads and medical facilities were revamped.
It’s the same Abacha many of us witnessed his regime when Nigeria was clearly in distress. But now, looking back, Abacha has become a saint and that is one thing about life.
History, they say will vindicate the just. History is now vindicating Abacha, not only for paying attention to Nigeria’s infrastructural needs but also for the six geographical zones in the country, for zoning of power, rotational presidency but for also convening the most useful national conference where these were decided.
General Abacha was a statesman.
After witnessing what happened with other Nigerian leaders after him, many Nigerians can now attest to the fact that he is a saint. ‘Saint Abacha’.
Former president Obasanjo was nothing compared to him and no other since Abacha has done the country well.
Anybody who dared challenge Abacha’s sainthood should speak up now or forever remain silent. Let Abacha be compared with those who ruled Nigeria after him.
I love president Buhari for taking the bull by the horns. They have killed everything good in Nigeria. They killed the rails. They killed power and killed businesses that depend on power for survival. Companies are folding up, Nigeria is perpetually in darkness and somebody was telling us how he spent more than $15 billion on power.
Where is the power? President Buhari deserves an award for speaking out in blunt and clear manner. He has kept silent for too long and like Professor Soyinka would say, the man dies in all who keeps silent in the face of tyranny.
They have brainwashed us for too long. All those who enjoyed Obasanjo’s prolific writings are now seeing the other side of him that portrays he is not a saint.
Let the wind continue to blow to expose the dirty anus of a fowl.
Poor, old Buhari. They are now making him pay for what he did not buy, paying the debt he did not owe, alleging all kinds of things against him as if he is the worst thing to happen to Nigeria.
Thank God for opening his mouth to speak. A closed mouth is a closed destiny.
Why wouldn’t Obasanjo be made to account how the money he spent on power project? Let him prove himself innocent; let him tell Nigerians how $16 Billion went with the wind.
Nigeria’s economy and infrastructure have been going down on roller-skates. People are worshipping the dollars, the Sterlings, not to even talk of the Naira. Who dared challenge the president on this?
If you ask me, President Buhari deserves a warm hug from every Nigerian for saying it as it is.
Nigerian education system has been suffering in the hands of those who run the affairs of this country, who sabotage the economy and then send their children abroad for studies?
So, where are all those attacking Buhari for seeking a second term?
Let he who is without sin come out now to cast the first stone.
The post When two elephants fight appeared first on Vanguard News.
May 26, 2018 at 09:56PM
