President Muhammadu Buhari has replied ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent criticism with a vow to teach him a political lesson he will never forget.
In a statement released by the president’s media aide, Garba Shehu, Buhari accused the former president of being hostile to leaders he couldn’t manipulate..
He described him as someone who lacks the moral standing to criticise his administration. Shehu responded that the former president needed to visit his doctor for treatment.
Obasanjo had, in an open letter on Sunday alleged that Buhari was taking the country down the path of Sani Abacha, former military dictator.
“The sixteen-page letter the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, wrote to President Muhammadu Buhari and released this afternoon is the last push by desperate politicians who can’t handle the President politically and have resorted to subterfuge,” the statement read.
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“Our first message to the former President is that he needs a good doctor for good treatment and to say to him, ‘Get well soon’.”
“As repeatedly said of him, since Chief Obasanjo left office in 1979, he never let every succeeding leader of the country function freely, and this included the one he personally handpicked against all known rules drawn up by the party that put him in the office of the President. But Chief Obasanjo is jealous because President Buhari has more esteem than him and the sooner he learns to respect him the better.
“It is a notorious fact that in dealing with any leader that he failed to control, he resorted to these puerile attacks. As the grand patron, more correctly the grandfather of corruption as described by the National Assembly, Chief Obasanjo released today’s letter purely for the reason of rescuing his thriving corruption establishment.
He noted that the President Buhari will follow through with his promise to conduct free and fair elections.
“What Chief Obasanjo and his co-travelers in the PDP should expect is that from the outcome, we will teach them a political lesson that they will never forget. This margin will be much bigger than we had in 2015.”
Shehu also debunked allegations of Obasanjo that the Buhari administration had started recruiting the officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) who would be used to rig the exercise.
“Claims that President Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have embarked on the president’s “self- succession project, by recruiting collation officers who are already awarding results based on their projects to actualise the perpetuation agenda, in which the people will not matter and the votes will not count” is not only utterly false, but a copious note from the book on the failed third term agenda of President Obasanjo,” the statement read.
“As for his attacks of the administration’s records in fighting corruption, what the former President said is no more than evidence that President Buhari’s war against corruption is succeeding. They thought it is all a joke.
“A leader who took USD 16 billion “upfront” to supply electric power yet failed to add a single megawatt to the national grid and to date, there is no trace of the money is jittery that he will be called to account. He is a coward.
“This language of his 16-page letter, likening President Buhari to General Sani Abacha, a man he dreaded and the one who jailed him under military laws is most unfitting from a former President of Nigeria.
“The claim that President Buhari has put in place rigging machinery is both outlandish and outrageous. We are unable to get the words to describe a 90-year old liar, except to say that by the publication of this tissue of lies against the President, he Obasanjo, not the President will fall from everyone’s esteem.”