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Tinubu bombs Obasanjo over attack on Buhari, APC, makes revelations
More criticisms have come the way of former president Olusegun Obasanjo over his letter where he chastised President Muhammadu Buhari and his administration, claiming the president was preparing to rig the 2019 poll.
In his response to the letter on Tuesday, former Lagos governor and Co-Chair of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaigns, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, said Obasanjo was projecting unto the APC the misconduct he would perpetrate if still in power.
“Yet, the ways of Obasanjo are not those of the APC. And this difference has meant the better for Nigeria,” Tinubu said in the strongly-worded letter.
Asiwaju described the former president as an election rigger without peer.
“There is no election which occurred under Obasanjo’s watch or in which he participated that did not involve cheating on his part. Even the late President Umaru Musa Yar ‘Adua admitted he was the beneficiary of a flawed election engineered by none other than today’s vociferous complainant,” he said.
Tinubu’s riposte personally signed by him, titled “CHIEF OBASANJO – AT WAR AGAINST HIS OWN DEEDS”, reads: “Former President Obasanjo is many things to many people; but he is all things unto himself. His recent contribution to our political discourse wherein he alleges plots to steer the coming elections shows he benefits from an exceedingly faulty memory, is purely shameless or has a most wicked sense of humor. Perhaps all three are facets of his makeup and were equally on display in his latest prosaic display.
“The crux of his long tirade was the allegation that INEC is poised to cook the election results. Chief Obasanjo should not get his dander up and waste good ink for nothing. This election will be a free and open exercise of the people’s right to choose their leaders. Obasanjo makes fiery allegations against this right but offers no corroborating evidence; he presents only reams of words. This is because Obasanjo is projecting onto the APC the misconduct he would wrought if still in power. Yet, the ways of Obasanjo are not those of the APC. And this difference has meant the better for Nigeria.
“Moreover, Chief Obasanjo should be the last to complain about election rigging. His administration was an unalloyed miscarriage of justice and of the best aspirations of the Nigerian people. We all know he was not elected in 1999. He was handed Nigeria on a silver platter; perhaps because Nigeria was so easily given that he went about treating the nation as if it was a less than precious thing; he thought it was a cheap give-away not a privilege to govern this nation.
“This man should have positioned himself to be the father of the nation. All the goodwill that could be granted a political figure was bestowed on him. The global economy was such that it fueled our growth. Everyone wanted Nigeria to succeed after emerging from years of noxious military rule. Despite the flawed exercise that rendered him president, we all bit our tongues in hope that he would say and do the right things that would move Nigeria forward.
“Instead of being a unifying figure as Commander-in-chief, he lowered himself to being a divisive, vindictive conniver. There was no table which he neared that he did not upset and overturn. There was no one who came into his company for any period of time with whom he did not fall out if he expresses a thought contrary to one of his.
“He tried to convert our young democracy into a one party state. His PDP boasted that they would rule for 60 uninterrupted years. Never did they boast that they would govern us well during even one year of the sixty. He could have placed the economy on the path to durable growth and shared prosperity through diversification, industrialization and creation of a social safety net for the poor. Instead, he handed the economy over to a tight group of cronies, turning what should be a modern economy into a version of the mammoth trading companies that dominated the 17th and 18th century. The Transcorp conglomerate was intended to be a throwback to monopolistic enterprises such as the East Indian Company wherein a select handful would control the national economy’s strategic heights.
“We hoped that Obasanjo would personify statesmanship, thus showing the way to a more benign political culture. Instead, he bickered and feuded with his vice president and mostly anyone who dared remind him that he was human and thus infallible.
“Given the vast margin between the good he could have achieved and the nebulous feats that comprise his true record, Chief Obasanjo is the person most responsible for the flaws in the Nigerian political economy since 1999. His ego is as expansive as the firmament but his good deeds would fit into a modest sachet with ample room to spare.
“The worst of Obasanjo’s record, I have yet to describe. When it comes to elections, he has been a rigger without peer. There is no election which occurred under Obasanjo’s watch or in which he participated that did not involve cheating on his part. Even the late President Umaru Musa Yar ‘Adua admitted he was the beneficiary of a flawed election engineered by none other than today’s vociferous complainant. For Obasanjo to lament over electoral malpractice is tantamount to the ocean complaining that a few raindrops are causing it to get wet.
“In his writing, Obasanjo alleges the Osun election indicates rigging will take place in the coming contests. Let’s go straight to the truth, Obasanjo has no grievance with the process. His personal history suggests fair process is the least of his concerns. What knocks Obasanjo off kilter is that he could not dictate the result in Osun. He told those in the PDP that he held sway in Osun and throughout the Southwest. They believed him. He led them to defeat notwithstanding the almost impossible voter turnout in PDP strongholds in that state. Obasanjo can only win an election when has the final say over the final vote tally. Otherwise, he is a troubled man.
“In an attempt to relieve his trouble, Chief Obasanjo makes reference to a joke about INEC. He says, “The INEC was asked if the Commission was ready for the election and if it expects the election to be free, fair and credible. The INEC man is reported as saying in response, ‘we are ready with everything including the results.’” The joke has a touch of humor; we are glad that Obasanjo is not completely devoid of this most human of traits. However, he makes a telling omission by failing to give you the vintage of this bit of sarcasm.
“The jest was not born last week. It’s vintage is circa 2003- a time when a certain President Obasanjo rode roughshod over INEC. He would summon the nervous INEC chairman to the Villa, proceeding to hector the man until he gave way to Obasanjo’s demands. At Obasanjo’s urging, INEC improperly published fake election results on the gubernatorial race in Lagos. Not until a public outcry did INEC back away from rigging Lagos. A similar attempt was made in Lagos in 2007. In essence, for Obasanjo to laugh at this joke means he has belatedly developed the ability to laugh at himself.
“If Obasanjo was so committed to free elections, how could he countenance Atiku’s recent boast of single-handedly rigging elections in the Southwest. Atiku claimed that he took all states for the PDP but left Lagos alone due to some misguided affinity for me. By this statement, Atiku publicly admitted to rigged elections in the SW. Beyond resort to wholesale rigging, Atiku could never deign to be more popular and potent in the Southwest than the panoply of good and decent leaders that guided the defunct AC. Moreover, I can assure you that we did not need Atiku’s false beneficence to win the elections in Lagos. The people voted for us and their votes countered the ill-designs Obasanjo and Atiku set in motion. Thus, if Obasanjo cannot chastise Atiku for publicly boasting that he rigged elections, then Obasanjo’s display of righteous indignation is but a magician’s trick.
“His fine words and sentiments come a dozen years too late. These noble things would have greater effect had he placed them into practice when he was at the helm of affairs. At that time, he was powerful so he did as he might. Now that he lacks power, he has taken to preach that which he never did.
“In his commentary, he mentions that INEC has a record of past rigging. I wonder if he understands the admission he makes. No other president has exercised such tight control over INEC for as many years as Obasanjo. No president has had the domineering relationship with INEC that Obasanjo enjoyed. If there are reports of past INEC rigging, those reports are of Obasanjo’s making. It is the irony of ironies for Obasanjo to complain of the fruit on the table when his was the hand that planted the tree.
“Chief Obasanjo tries to further confuse matters by pointing to the case of the CJN’s assets declaration as evidence of future vote-rigging via tampering with the judiciary. Again, Obasanjo goes into a personality shift. For years, Obasanjo has boasted of himself as our corruption fighter nonpareil. The very aim of this current letter is to attack imagined INEC malfeasance. Yet, with regard to the CJN, he blithely ignores the large cache of dollars in the CJN’s account and the millions of dollars that passed through the accounts. Obasanjo seems unbothered by the unexplained presence of such sums. Perhaps Obasanjo’s nonchalance regarding the money is that he expected the funds there because he knows both the origin and reasons for the trove.
“Chief Obasanjo sinks so low as to suggest that the VP, during the exercise of his official duties, was taking the PVC numbers of market women and traders. This statement reveals the bilious nature of the man. Obasanjo even quotes the notorious Bode George in claiming that the VP was “gutting our collective treasury” by giving loans of N10,000 to market women under the administration’s empowerment programs.
“What? Giving money to poor people to enhance their lives and escape the maw of poverty is, by PDP metrics, gutting the collective treasury. If helping the poor is gutting the treasury, Atiku’s privatizing large chunks of the economy into his own pocket must have been seen by the PDP as a vital public service. Jonathan and his Petroleum Minister’s siphoning government coffers of several billion dollars to enrich the already-rich must have been viewed by the PDP as the epitome of a social safety net. Obasanjo’s and the PDP’s disdain for the common person could not be clearer.
“Obasanjo should be ashamed to even raise this issue. When he was president, the economy was on an easy sledding due to positive global trends. Obasanjo did not raise a finger to do anything for the poor. He and Atiku were champions of trickle-down economics. If anything good trickled down to the poor it was by accident. Obasanjo left the poor unattended because he cared nothing for them. Poverty increased under his cold indifference. Not one meaningful social program was established during his watch. The banking and pension deregulation he brought were geared to profit the wealthy CEO’s and managers of these financial entities. The malpractices attendant to these deregulation fiascos extinguished the savings of millions of Nigerians. In reliance on these artifices of Obasanjo and his ilk, many Nigerians were thrust down the lower rungs of the poverty they so desperately sought to avoid. Obasanjo’s allies gobbled the savings of the poor and still feast on them to this day.
“Chief Obasanjo is one of the last people to preach to anyone about using public funds to care for the poor. He had the gall to fret that funds should not be given to the urban poor because they are not poor enough. But his grouse does not show any defect in the administration’s program. His complaint shows the defect in Obasanjo’s humanity or lack of it. To complain that some people are not poor enough for his liking is to reveal that seeing human suffering does not motivate him to cure it. He would rather that people suffer it the more. Your unease and distress becomes his entertainment or at least evidence he is superior to the common man. Watching a laborer struggle against penury is no more than a spectator sport for Obasanjo.
“The most fantastic of all his claims is that this administration has returned Nigeria to the days of Abacha. If this were true, the press would be constantly closed. Obasanjo would be constricted in writing such letters. Elections would not be upon us. Atiku would not be able to freely campaign and the diversity of opinion in the public space would be suppressed.
“For Obasanjo to utter such an outrage is that he hopes lighting strikes twice. He was ushered into office after Abacha’s demise. He thinks if he can invoke Abacha’s name, the same thing will happen again. By hook, crook or utter fantasy, Obasanjo seeks to return to Aso Villa, not as an irritating, importuning guest but as a long-term resident. He wants to be back in control. If he cannot be president, then the president better carve from his office a special room for Obasanjo.
“Obasanjo thinks he is more than the greatest Nigerian. He thinks himself greater than Nigeria itself. Unless he is allowed to lead the procession, he will groan, grouse and grit. However, neither President Buhari nor the progressive APC have much use for his reactionary policies and his megalomaniac ways. Thus, we shall be forced to endure more of his letters. But enduring such missives is vastly superior and small price to pay for not having to endure a repeat of his unenlightened misgovernance”.
News
Rep Oseni Rallies Support for Ikogosi Development Projects, Calls for Resilience, Unity
The Chairman of the House Committee on the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) and representative of Ibarapa East/Ido Federal Constituency in Oyo State, Engr. Aderemi Oseni, on Saturday urged the community to unite in advancing key development projects aimed at transforming Ikogosi.
Speaking at this year’s Ikogosi Day celebration and the launch of a N1 billion development project in Ekiti, the lawmaker, who served as the Chairman of the occasion, emphasised the importance of unity and collective action.
He encouraged attendees to approach the celebration as a call to action for the betterment of their community.
“As we all know, Ikogosi is not merely a town; it is a treasured gem in the heart of Ekiti State and Nigeria as a whole,” he said. “Ikogosi, a historic and vibrant town, plays a vital role in the tourism and economic landscape of Ekiti State. Its rich cultural heritage and unique resources draw visitors and stimulate economic activities that benefit us all.”
“Today is not just a celebration; it is a call to action,” he continued. “Let us come together, united in purpose, to support these transformative projects that promise to uplift the Ikogosi community. I urge everyone here to invest their time, resources, and energy in this endeavor. Together, we can build a legacy of self-help and development that future generations will cherish.”
Reflecting on the broader challenges facing the country, Oseni encouraged the people of Ikogosi and all Nigerians to remain hopeful and resilient, assuring them of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s commitment to a brighter future for the nation.
“To the good people of Ikogosi and all citizens of Nigeria, I urge you to remain steadfast and hopeful. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu means well for all Nigerians. The APC-led administration’s Renewed Hope agenda holds the promise of a brighter future. Though the beginnings may be challenging, perseverance will guide us toward a prosperous new Nigeria,” he stated.
In a statement released by his media aide, Idowu Ayodele, the lawmaker lauded the Ekiti State government under Governor Biodun Oyebanji’s leadership for its transformative efforts in governance and development.
He acknowledged the strides made by the governor and praised his impactful initiatives, which have set Ekiti on a progressive path.
“First and foremost, let me commend the Ekiti State government under the leadership of His Excellency, Mr. Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji. The trailblazing development initiatives and effective governance during your tenure have not gone unnoticed,” Oseni remarked.
“Under your stewardship, we have witnessed remarkable progress and commendable governance that have undoubtedly made Ekiti State a shining example of peace and development,” he added.
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Bad Roads: ‘Focus on Message, Not Messenger’ – Nigerians Tell Works Minister, Umahi
The Nigerian Minister of Works, David Umahi, has ignited widespread public reaction following his response to recent criticisms by Engr. Aderemi Oseni, Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA).
Oseni, who represents Ibarapa East/Ido Federal Constituency in Oyo State, had accused Umahi of neglecting essential infrastructure needs, alleging that the minister has “no plan for the nation.”
At a committee oversight meeting last Thursday, the lawmaker expressed his frustration over the worsening state of roads across the country.
“You are not here to tell us what we already know in the area of resources,” Oseni stated. “If you are telling us the reason you have failed in fixing our road infrastructure is because of resources, don’t let me take you up on that, because you concentrated your energy as a minister on less priority issues.”
In response, Umahi addressed a press briefing at the ministry’s headquarters in Abuja on Monday, dismissing Oseni’s comments.
He remarked that Oseni “had not attained half of what I have achieved in life” and added that he would “not join issues with the lawmaker” out of respect for the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the National Assembly.
Speaking further, the minister suggested that Oseni was representing contractors affected by recent reforms in the Ministry of Works.
“Let me say that I was not physically present at the meeting, nor was my permanent secretary,” Umahi said. “Nobody can talk to me like that in my presence. It’s not possible.”
Public Outcry: Nigerians Demand Accountability
Umahi’s remarks have drawn backlash on social media, where Nigerians urged him to focus on addressing their concerns about deplorable road conditions rather than deflecting criticisms.
Many expressed frustration with the state of federal roads, calling on the minister to prioritize solutions over defensiveness.
“Mr umahi, ur have actually abandoned our existing roads all over Nigeria and focusing on elephants projects”, commented Daniel Morgan. “Travelling from Southwest to Southeast is now by the special grace of God. Please do something and stop criticizing the messenger and look into the massage.”
Charles Anarado added, “No matter how one may look at this matter, Oseni stands on a sound good point that building a new stretch of road for N15trillion that is more than enough to fix all the bad major roads around the country seems indeed to be a misplaced priority. It’s just like parent using the funds meant for paying his children to school to buy a car to take them to school. His decision may seem good but paying school fees should certainly be his priority”.
Calls for Transparency and Priority on Repairs
Other Nigerians joined the conversation, with some social media users demanding more accountability from the minister.
Nnaemeka Mekah voiced frustration over Umahi’s response to criticism, stating, “This short man takes every criticism as a personal attack. Oga minister, MOST NIGERIAN ROADS ARE IMPASSABLE NOW, and you’re doing absolutely nothing about it. Dunno what else you claim to have achieved in life, but as far as Nigerian toads are concerned, you’re a monumental failure”.
Another user, Nanmah Fanto, supported Oseni’s criticisms, commenting, , “The Reps Committee Chairman, was absolutely correct 2 tell Umahi d truth about accountability n Umahi’s lack of given priority 2 existing bad roads, n concentrating on unimportant road construction. I used 2 think Umahi was wise, until that incident I realized that he wasn’t better at all, he’s also thinking of enriching himself at d detriment of fixing our bad roads. Now, I know better, he shouldn’t be given any more funds until he explains how judiciously he spent d #300 billion given to him”.
Meanwhile, Facebook user, Dapo Oyedele suggested a constructive approach, urging Umahi to respond with facts.
“It’s not about joining issues, it’s accountability. The truth is that federal roads are very bad. But your ministry is doing it’s best. The roads are many… Reply the honourable with facts and figures of what has been done in about one and half years and what’s are your plans to improve the situation of the roads as d minister”.
Nationwide Demand for Effective Solutions
Frustration over Nigeria’s roads continued to echo online, with many demanding that Umahi focus on repairing existing infrastructure.
Ogheneovo Peter William, another Facebook user remarked, “I will join issue Because na bitter the lawmaker tell you, Bad roads every, People are suffering from una bad policies, Them people go still suffer bad road”? he questioned.
“It is not about joining the issue with anyone. It is about fixing the existing roads that we have and stop this white elephant project of Lagos calabar costar road”, a user on Facebook, Sunday Adewuyi Adedokun said.
Continuing, Francis Azuka Obukwelu opined on the ‘blue App’, “He should say something about the bad roads in Nigeria”.
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Oseni Donates N10m to Support Ibadan’s Mogaji Ile Eke Project
The Chairman, House Committee on Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), Engr. Aderemi Oseni has made a donation of ten million naira (N10m) towards the Mogajis’ Ile Eke project in Ibadan.
Oseni, who also represents Ibarapa East/Ido Federal Constituency of Oyo State, said the donation is aimed at supporting the Mogajis assembly’s project that holds immense cultural significance for the wider Ibadan community.
According to him, the project will remain a testament to the cultural and historical legacy of Ibadanland as it is expected to preserve the historic relevance of the palace while enhancing its role as a cultural landmark.
In a statement released on Saturday by his media aide, Idowu Ayodele, and made available to newsmen in Ibadan, the lawmaker emphasised the importance of preserving cultural heritage and fostering unity within traditional institutions.
He highlighted that the project would not only elevate the status of the Mogajis’ assembly but also serve as a central hub for promoting Ibadan’s rich cultural history.
“It is a privilege that I was called to be part of the project. If I fail to support it, the project will still be successful, but I believe I have to contribute. My life is dedicated to serving God Almighty, the people, and humanity,” Oseni said.
He further stated, “As a son of the soil, it is my responsibility to contribute to the growth of our shared heritage – Ibadan and by extension, Oyo state as a whole. The Mogajis’ Ile Eke project symbolises our collective identity and unity as a people. This donation is my modest contribution towards ensuring that future generations can connect with their roots.”
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