Former President Olusegun Obasanjo says there appears to be a difference between the Muhammadu Buhari that worked with him when he was military Head of State and the one currently occupying the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
However, he said that the difference was in perspective and not physical appearance, dismissing claims that the president has been replaced by an impostor from Sudan.
Obasanjo spoke over the weekend in a virtual interview with an academic, Toyin Falola on Sunday.
After replacing General Murtala Muhammed in 1976, Obasanjo appointed then-Colonel Buhari as the Federal Commissioner for Petroleum and Natural Resources (now minister).
Recall that the fugitive leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu has sensationally claimed that the Buhari that Nigerians elected in 2015 died in office and was replaced with a doppelganger he identified as Jubril al-Sudani.
He alleged that a “cabal” in the presidency did this in order to hang on to power.
However, Obasanjo described the claim as “nonsense”.
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The former president said, “I thought I knew President Buhari because he worked with me. But I used to ask people, is it that I have not read him well or read him adequately or is it that he has changed from the Buhari that I used to know? I am not subscribing to the people who say we have a new Buhari from Sudan and all that nonsense.
“I know what I believed was his limitations and I have written about it –he wasn’t strong in economics, not all of us are strong in anything but you need to have sufficient knowledge of it for you to direct the affairs. He wasn’t particularly too strong in foreign affairs but I thought he was strong enough in the military.
“From his performance in his first outing as head of state, I thought he would also do well in fighting corruption. I did not know the nepotistic tendencies of President Buhari maybe because he was not exposed to that sort of situation when he worked with me.
“With what I have seen now, I believe that maybe he will be thinking of a legacy. Maybe he will also learn from what has happened in recent times.
“If you are the commander-in-chief and banditry is taking place in your backyard, then you have to wake up. The president changed his service chiefs after they have been there for more than five years without any perceptible improvement and some people started jubilating.
“I don’t know any of those people that have been appointed as service chiefs but you will hear my comments three to six months from now because within that period, we should be able to show what they can do.”