Obasanjo’s call for revolution
By Ben Nanaghan
During a recent conference on youth
employment in Dakar, Senegal, former President Olusegun Obasanjo shocked
his audience by openly calling for a revolution in Nigeria.
Also, it will be recalled that the
former President called Nigerians to come out en masse for a Nigerian
type “Arab spring (revolution)” during a workshop on economic
diversification and revenue generation in December 2011 at the June 12
Cultural Centre in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Obasanjo’s call was hinged on the
prevailing high rate of youth unemployment, which he estimated to be
about 72 per cent. If the audience in Dakar was shocked, then the
residents of Warri in Delta State were utterly astonished when he
commented on President Goodluck Jonathan’s handling of the crisis in the
North.
Most Nigerians are unable to understand
why and how a former President could incite the people to the path of
revolution as a measure to check unemployment.
They become jittery when such comments
come from a retired Army general of the calibre and stature of
Obasanjo.
His insistence on a revolution has become an unpalatable cliché that
Nigerians must decipher.
Obasanjo’s statements are more
unsettling because he has unrestrained access to Aso Rock to advise and
even brief Jonathan on such issues relating to national security.
Also, he has the opportunity to meet
Jonathan one-on-one during their monthly National Council of State
meetings in Aso Rock. And so why does the former President rage and
attempt to pull down what he has helped in building?
Like all human beings, the former
President has his own shortcomings. The most prominent of these is his
pay-back mentality for any request scorned or denied.
He believes so much in the myth that he
is a superhero. As Nigeria’s patron saint, he believes that he is the
best President this country ever had.
Today, Obasanjo’s call for a Nigerian type Arab Spring has revealed his short-sightedness.
The Arab Spring or Arab Uprising
started in Tunisia on December 18, 2010 when a Tunisian unemployed
graduate Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze to protest police
corruption and brutality.
The ensuing protest spread throughout
Tunisia with increased violence. The result was that the then Tunisian
President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia on
January 14, 2011.
The protests spread through North Africa
and the Gulf States engulfing Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and
Syria. Echoes of the Arab Spring resounded in Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco,
Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Djibouti, et cetera.
Today the dregs of the Arab Spring are
yet to settle. President Hosni Mubarak was forced to flee on February
11, 2011. And till date, Egypt does not have a stable government as
Tahrir Square has become a symbol of the peoples’ solidarity.
Even with the democratic election of
President Mohammed Morsy of the Moslem Brotherhood, Egypt is as unstable
as an ancient blackboard standing on three legs, with the hind leg
broken off.
Obasanjo’s call for a revolution because
of youth unemployment is misplaced. People like him should not pray for
a revolution, not even for their children because revolutions are
cataclysmic, destructive and unpredictable. The no-nonsense former
President needs some tutorial on revolutions.
In his recent role as the moderator for
Bishop Ayo Oritsejafor’s 40th anniversary on the pulpit, he lambasted
President Goodluck Jonathan’s weak response to the Boko Haram crisis.
Obasanjo flaunted his genocidal and
criminal demolition of Odi in Bayelsa State, where unidentified
militants killed 19 soldiers. Some day, he will appear at the War Crime
Tribunal at the Hague to answer for heinous crimes against the residents
of Odi.
The former President speaks of
unemployment, but he has forgotten that he laid a solid foundation for
this by wasting $16bn on electricity generation without any impact on
Nigeria’s electricity generation and distribution.
At the time he handed over to the late
Umaru Yar’Adua, Nigeria’s electricity megawatts was a paltry 2000 for a
population of 140 million people while South Africa boasts 50,0000
megawatts for its 45million people.
Industries started folding up and
relocating to Ghana during Obasanjo’s government with hundreds of
thousands of workers thrown into the unemployment market. He built a
personal library in Abeokuta worth N7bn and coerced Nigeria’s richest
businessmen, some of who are his business partners, to bank-roll the
project which he cunningly named the Presidential Library Project.
What more can we mention now? Is it the
pauperisation of Nigerians due to the increase in the price of commodity
items like rice, sugar, cement, flour and noodles, which were licensed
to only one man to import, or the quarterly increase in the price of
petroleum products?
God save Nigeria.
No, not Nigeria but God save Obasanjo,hypocrites who are looking for coverups.If Adam and Eve where freed from punishment because of their excuses,then the past Nigerians presidents will,but if not, a payday is coming for them all.
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