Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that he has no regrets bringing to the presidency of the country, late President Umar Yar’Adua and the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. He said if any of them is considered not to have done well, it should be an object lesson to their successors so that “those who follow after can do well.” The former president made the remarks yesterday during the public presentation of his memoir, My Watch at the Lagos Country Club. He explained that as a critic of bad governments around Africa, especially in Nigeria, he had written severally to President Jonathan whose administration he considers inept and a colossal failure. He said it was as a result of Jonathan’s refusal to seriously consider the points he made in those epistles that informed his exposing those correspondences to journalists. Speaking on why he has chosen this period of upsurge in political activities to write My Watch, Obasanjo said the idea was to give those who may not be happy about their depiction in his book an opportunity to give contrary evidence, especially now that Nigerians have to decide their next leaders. Apart from Jonathan, Obasanjo berated some of the key figures in the current political transition. He portrayed former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as a liar, Buhari a possible anticorruption fighter that lacks adequate knowledge of economic reforms, Nasir el-Rufai as a brilliant man who is often economical with the truth and former Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu as the worst of them all. The characters are presented as defective as their personality is large. On the aborted tenure elongation bill, Obasanjo explained that it was never his brainchild but that of governors who wanted to benefit from additional term in office and demanded his support. He named former Senators Ibrahim Mantu and Florence Ita-Giwa, among others, as his witnesses. Incidentally, all the men for whom Obasanjo has unkind words are chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) whose national convention begins today in Lagos Buhari, Atiku and others are interlocked in a fierce contest for the APC presidential ticket. Reviewer of the book, Patrick Okigbo, erstwhile coordinator of United States-based civil society group, Nigerians United for Democracy and Development (NUDD), described My Watch as both a memoir and a historical document, and offered that at the deepest level of conviction, Obasanjo believes he is God’s watchman in Nigeria and perhaps the father of Nigeria. On Obasanjo’s legacies as a two-time Nigerian ruler, Okigbo has this to say: “What’s Obasanjo’s legacies? It will be debated by researchers for decades to come. He brought his energetic person to his various roles in Nigeria in the last 50 years. The result of the reforms will be remembered as one of the flashes of brilliance in a nation that has not experienced flashes of brilliance. But his not being able to entrench the reforms should be accepted as one of his failings.” Many dignitaries, who attended the presentation of My Watch, paid glowing tribute to Obasanjo. They include former Education Minister, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili and one-time Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Professor Ayo Ibidapo-Obe.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 10:20:19 +0000
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