For advising President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek reelection and initiating the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM), former President Olusegun Obasanjo came under attack yesterday.
Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka dismissed the CNM, saying he would need to have his head examined should he identify with the Obasanjo-inspired group.
Former Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Adamu warned the ex-President that he might soon become a national nuisance, with the way he had refused to allow his predecessors run the country.
Sen. Abdullahi Adamu said Obasanjo cannot dictate to Nigerians who to vote in 2019.
He also described Obasanjo’s CNM as a red herring which cannot influence the outcome of the next election, adding that the former president’s statement was in bad taste.
According to him, Obasanjo ought to have been put on trial for corruption.
Prof. Soyinka spoke in an interview with BBC Yoruba. Adamu spoke at a news conference in Abuja.
Soyinka said: “Me? Obasanjo would establish a group and I will become a member of such group? That means they should get a psychiatrist to examine me.”
He also spoke about the controversial statement by former military President Ibrahim Babangida, also on Buhari’s administration.
Soyinka said: “When these soldiers begin to speak, we are supposed to get suspicious and ask what exactly do they have in mind? It is possible that what they have in mind is different from what we have in mind.”
“You can look at it from two perspectives – the messenger and the message. The message should be examined closely. We should not look at the misdeeds of the messenger alone. Let’s start by asking, is he saying the truth or telling lies, or is he being tricky?
“If he is saying the truth and talking about things that are beneficial to the masses, we would allow that be. After that, we would now look at the person speaking; what is in his mind? … even if it’s a little child who is speaking, as far as that child is saying the truth, we won’t ask the child to keep quiet.
We won’t ask the child, what do you know? We would listen. It is the same situation with those who have presided over the affairs of this nation without making significant progress.
“We have seen their weaknesses, we have seen their nakedness in public, if they now want to be covered by saying that they have turned a new leaf, we would examine that, too. What I am saying, in essence, is that what they have said should also be examined.”
He urged the youth to come together and present a candidate to represent them, adding that the older generation would support them.
“We have a lot of them. It is the turn of the younger ones. If they come together, as we speak, if they can start now and bring out one individual among them, we will work with him,” Soyinka said.
“We are going to give them the support they need to transform the country. People like us are supposed to sit somewhere.”
Adamu said Buhari does “not intend to leave a bleeding, disunited nation and disarticulated socio-economic development at the end of his tenure”.
He said: “…Let me say at this point that I am worried by the antics of Obasanjo and his penchant for promoting himself as the only competent Nigerian leader.
“Since he left office on October 1, 1979 to local and international applause, Obasanjo has systematically sought to undermine every federal administration after him. He has today set up himself as the moral conscience of the nation.
He believes he has acquired the wisdom of King Solomon and has consequently imposed on himself the right to decide who rules us and how we should be ruled”.