FORMER President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has accused incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of planning to frame him up.
Mr Obasanjo made the allegation on Friday in a statement signed by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi.
Akinyemi dispatched the statements to journalists in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital.
The former president quoting his anonymous sources said his name was on the Watch List of Buhari’s administration.
Obasanjo said the security of his life cannot be guaranteed with the government’s latest move against him.
Obasanjo
raising the alarm said since his State-of-the-Nation Special Statement
on January 23, 2018, “the Federal Government had embarked on desperate
efforts to frustrate, intimidate and blackmail him into abandoning what
he termed ‘divine mandate to protect the rights of the people to better
life and living'”.
The former Nigerian leader had urged the
president not to seek a second term in office, citing underperformance.
His advise has been waved away by Mr Buhari who has declared his
intention to run in the 2019 election.
Mr Buhari recently accused
Obasanjo of frittering away $16 billion on phoney electricity projects.
Mr Obasanjo dismissed the claim saying the president was ignorant.
READ OBASANJO'S STATEMENT BELOW:
“Since
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo declared in his State-of-the-Nation Special
Statement on January 23, 2018, the desperation to frustrate, intimidate
and blackmail him into abandoning his divine mandate to protect the
rights of the people to better life and living continued unabated and
has even taken a bizarre dimension.
“Impeccable security sources
have alleged Chief Obasanjo’s name is on their Watch List and that the
security of his life cannot be guaranteed.
“According to these
informants, many of who are in the top echelon of the Nation’s security
management and close to the corridors of power, the operatives are daily
perfecting how to curtail the personal liberties of the former
President and hang a crime on him.
“Ordinarily, we would not have
dignified these reports with a response but for the fact that many of
these informants are not known for flippant and frivolous talks.
Secondly, this Government has demonstrably exhibited apathy, and in some
cases, encouraged by its conduct, daily loss of lives and property in
many States of the country, the office cannot be indifferent.
“We
are currently in a nation where the Number Three citizen is currently
being harangued and the Number Four citizen is facing similar threat
within the same Government they serve. There is a groundswell of our
nationals that live in fear that they could be hounded, harassed, maimed
or even killed as the battle for 2019 takes this worrisome dimension.
“For
Chief Obasanjo, this is a joke carried too far and being someone who do
not act on unofficial information, he had cautioned all informants and
adopted a wait-and-see attitude to the bestial propositions allegedly
being contemplated to cow, cage and embarrass him.
“The content
of the alleged beastly designs, it was learnt are two-fold for now. One,
to seize his International Passport and clamp him into detention
indefinitely, in order to prevent him from further expressing angst on
the pervasive mediocrity in the quality of governance, economic
management and in the protection of lives and property by the
Government. But, since that could expose the Government to a swath of
international condemnation, embarrassment and outrage, it is said that
another plot being hatched is to cause the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC) to re-open investigation into the activities of Chief
Obasanjo’s administration using false witnesses and documents. This
will be a re- enactment of the Abacha era in which Chief Obasanjo was
one of the principal victims.
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