The senator representing Nasarawa West Senatorial District, Senator Abdullahi Adamu has expressed concerns over former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s criticisms of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Senator Adamu, who chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture, said “while Obasanjo is entitled to criticise and campaign against the re-election bid of President Buhari, he shouldn’t be pedestrian in doing that.”
Obasanjo was, few days ago, reported to have denied being neutral in the choice of who emerges as president of Nigeria in the 2019 presidential election, stating that he would not sit on the fence when he needed to be out and active for people to know where he stands in the best interest of the country.
A statement by Obasanjo’s media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, on Sunday, said the former president believed that “only a fool will sit on the fence or be neutral when his or her country is being destroyed with incompetence, corruption, lack of focus, insecurity, nepotism, brazen impunity and denial of the obvious”.
However, reacting to the statement in a chat with newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday, Senator Adamu stated that “Chief Obasanjo is pushing his luck too far by using indecorous language in criticising the president (Buhari); after all, what was his [Obasanjo] record in Office when he ran this country first from February 1976 to October 1979, and subsequently from May 1999 to May 2007? Would there have been the desperate and notoriously corrupt bid for a third term in Office that was witnessed by Nigerians, if he had a good record by then?”
He said under Obasanjo’s watch, most of Nigeria’s strategic investments were sold without much to show as returns to the nation. “What happened to all our steel rolling mills and other strategic investments that were sold by (former Vice President) Atiku (Abubakar) under Obasanjo’s supervision?
“What about the $16 billion spent under his watch supposedly for electricity? Where is the electricity today? He also acquired stupendous wealth during his second coming as president. How did he acquire that? Could that have come from his salaries as president from 1999 to 2007?,” he queried. (Daily Trust)
