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Tinubu to Obasanjo: You’re a hypocrite! Nigeria’s father of bad leadership
President Bola Tinubu, on Monday, returned fire to Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s former President, two days after the latter all but blamed him for the critical state the country has found itself, accusing the former military Head of State of hypocrisy and lacking in moral position to criticise any of his successors, given his own bad records.
On Saturday, Obasanjo, the Keynote Speaker at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, accused Tinubu of driving the country towards a failed state similar to Somalia and Yemen, due to his penchant for corruption and anti-people behaviours.
Hear him: “As we can see and understand, Nigeria’s situation is bad. The more the immorality and corruption of a nation, the more the nation sinks into chaos, insecurity, conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence, and underdevelopment.
“That’s the situation mostly in Nigeria in the reign of Baba-go-slow and Emilokan. The failing state status of Nigeria is confirmed and glaringly indicated and manifested for every honest person to see through the consequences of the level of our pervasive corruption, mediocrity, immorality, misconduct, mismanagement, perversion, injustice, incompetence and all other forms of iniquity.”
But in his clapback, Tinubu, via Bayo Onanuga, his spokesman, listed a surfeit of all that were bad during the tenure of the former President, who holds the record of Nigeria’s longest serving leader with a record of 11 years, having added eight years tenure to his three years as military Head of State, insisting that the dismal outing was partly what the country was suffering today.
Full text of Tinubu’s reply, read: “In a recent display of his characteristic self-importance, former President Olusegun Obasanjo once again took to the public stage to bestow his unsolicited wisdom on leadership and governance in Nigeria. From his lofty perch, he blamed those who served after his tenure for the nation’s myriad challenges.
“Unfortunately, the former leader’s habit of casting aspersions on every subsequent administration has devolved into a recurring pastime, overshadowing the expectation of an elder statesman to join a constructive dialogue on attaining national progress.
“In his latest critique of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, whom he pejoratively called ‘Baba Go Slow’ and President Bola Tinubu, who he tagged ‘Emilokan’, Chief Obasanjo used the platform provided by Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum at Yale University to unfurl his latest treatise on leadership and public morality. He also used the forum to write off Nigeria as a failing country.
“The irony of Chief Obasanjo using the platform that celebrates Achebe to sermonise on the ideals of good governance, statecraft, economic management, and corruption should be apparent to discerning minds. When he was alive, Chinua Achebe was a universally acclaimed moral, cultural and literary icon with scant regard for Obasanjo.
“It is on record that Professor Achebe rejected the third highest national honour bestowed on him by the Obasanjo-led administration in 2004 on the grounds of the prevalence of abuse of power, corruption, poor leadership, and, in particular, state-sponsored brigandage endorsed by Chief Obasanjo in Achebe’s home state of Anambra. In Anambra, the former president actively supported the abduction of a sitting governor, Dr Chris Ngige, by non-state actors led by Chris Uba, a younger brother of Obasanjo’s senior aide.
“In rejecting the 2004 national honour by the Obasanjo administration, Achebe declared: “Nigeria’s condition today under your watch is…too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honour awarded me in the 2004 honours list.”
“Brazen illegality and assault on the Constitution of Nigeria reached a disturbing height under the leadership of Chief Obasanjo. “During Obasanjo’s era, the unconstitutional impeachment of four governors who belonged to his party occurred. The governors impeached by minority members of the Houses of Assembly were Joshua Dariye of Plateau, Rashidi Ladoja of Oyo, Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa. A man under whose watch all of these egregious infractions occurred should certainly not be the one to give any lecture on leadership and corruption. He should not be taken seriously as he reeks of profound hypocrisy of the worst form.
“Former President Obasanjo has continuously pumped himself up as the economic wizard of Nigeria. But a reality check showed he was nothing of such. He left unresolved many, if not all, of the problems of Nigeria, which he itemised in his lecture.
“He even recently admitted that his government made a mistake by not focussing on gas development, as the Tinubu administration does today. All oil and gas players know that Nigeria has more gas than oil. The only positive of the Obasanjo era was fiscal and monetary policy management buoyed by a consistent rise in crude oil prices throughout his eight-year tenure.
“This rise in crude oil prices started in 2000 and peaked in 2013 when it reached over 100 dollars per barrel before a decline in 2014, which set the oil-dependent economy downward. The current economic crisis the All Progressives Congress administrations have been battling since 2015 is the product of the poor choices in economic management made by Obasanjo and the two successors from his party.
“Obasanjo prides his government on paying the $15 billion debt owed to the Paris Club. Still, it was not a wise decision as it was done when the country’s critical economic infrastructure across sectors was in shambles.
“While oil receipts brought money into the country, Obasanjo failed to fix the deplorable federal roads or expand the national road network. He did not repair the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, the Lagos-Abeokuta road leading to his hometown in Abeokuta, the Otta-Idiroko road, and many others.
“His administration also should have paid more serious attention to universities and polytechnics. In a joint vote of no confidence in our tertiary institutions, Obasanjo and his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, sought to profit from their weaknesses by establishing their private universities.
“As a sitting President, Chief Obasanjo abused his office to advance personal interest against the spirit and letters of our constitution when he corralled leading businessmen, women and government contractors to donate billions of naira for his Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library and Resorts in Abeokuta and his Bell University in Otta.
“After wasting billions of naira on a failed third-term project in 2007, Chief Obasanjo hurriedly organised a sham electoral process that would go down in history as the most fraudulent election held in Nigeria since 1960. The beneficiary of the sham election, Umaru Yar’adua, admitted that the election was seriously flawed and, as Justice Muhammed Uwais’s panel recommended, worked towards electoral reforms.
“It is hypocrisy writ large when a man who presided over the worst election in Nigeria demands the sack of the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission.
“For eight years, the Obasanjo administration made no significant investment in security by modernising the Armed Forces. He did not redesign the national security architecture or change the military doctrine. The most critical investment in our armed forces, especially the military, since the administration of President Shehu Shagari in 1980 was made by the APC-led administration of President Buhari from 2015-2023.
“When President Buhari assumed office in 2015, the Air Force had fewer than three serviceable fighter jets, and the Navy barely had one serviceable vessel. Within eight years, President Buhari acquired over 40 new fighter jets of different capabilities, including 12 Tucano jets.
“He also acquired naval ships to strengthen the Navy. The APC administration of Buhari developed the air wings of the Army and Navy and changed the entire Armed Forces into one of the most potent fighting forces in the world.
“President Tinubu has continued to sustain the same support and funding to the military and other security agencies. It is the reason the country is winning in the multi-pronged fight against Boko Haram terrorists, bandits, kidnappers, and other perpetrators of violent crimes.
“In the last year, over 400 terror and bandit kingpins have been eliminated, and thousands of Nigerians have been freed from their abductors. The insecurity that engulfed Nigeria started under the Obasanjo administration with militancy and kidnapping of expatriate oil workers in the Niger Delta, which later became a festering wound from which the nation has not recovered. Boko Haram, which became a violent movement in 2009, began its build-up under Obasanjo’s regime.
“On matters of integrity, honesty, and morality in public leadership, Chief Obasanjo is certainly not a paragon of virtue for anyone to model after. Nigerians can still remember the messy public spat between Chief Obasanjo and his then-vice president, Atiku Abubakar, over PTDF money that led to a Senate Public Hearing in 2004.
“The sordid details of the public hearing included unsettling evidence of how Obasanjo instructed his Vice President to buy Sport Utility Vehicles for his mistresses with PTDF funds. There was also the Halliburton bribe scandal, which the US Congress probe revealed. Bribe payments were made to the highest political authorities at the Villa while Obasanjo was in charge.
“Nigerians will also remember how the Obasanjo administration invested $16 billion on electricity, which left the country in utter darkness. The colossal amount spent on power was so embarrassing that President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Obasanjo’s successor, ordered a probe. Similarly, Obasanjo’s privatisation programme was scandalous. It did not deliver real value for the country.
“His administration cheaply sold national assets to cronies who stripped the assets of the state-owned enterprises. A case in point was the aluminium smelter company ALSCON in Ikot-Abasi, Akwa-Ibom State, built by the military government at the princely sum of $ 3.2 billion. It was sold for 130 million dollars. Obasanjo also sank money into Turn Around Maintenance of our refineries, which never worked, leading to the massive importation of refined petroleum products.
“Such was the miasma of corruption under Obasanjo that the former governor of Abia, Orji Uzor Kalu, his party member, petitioned the EFCC, accusing Obasanjo of gross abuse of office.
“If Chief Obasanjo had addressed the many problems he critiqued in his poorly written Yale lecture when he ruled Nigeria for eight years, President Buhari and President Tinubu would have had a much lighter burden of fixing the country.
“While the Tinubu administration diligently works to overcome the country’s economic challenges, it would be better and more advisable for former President Obasanjo to temper his self-righteousness in his public discussions regarding our nation’s temporary difficulties. Instead, his remaining years would be better spent reflecting on the missed opportunities during his own time in leadership, both as military head of state and civilian president.”
Fuel marketers across Abuja on Wednesday continued to sell Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly known as petrol, at old prices more than 24 hours after Dangote Petroleum Refinery announced a reduction in its ex-depot price, Vanguard is reporting.
The paper reported that its investigation, showed that major retail outlets were yet to adjust their pump prices despite the N75 per litre reduction announced by the refinery on Monday.
At the retail stations visited in Abuja, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Retail and TotalEnergies dispensed petrol at N1,335 per litre, while AA Rano sold at N1,350 per litre. AYM Shafa and Conoil outlets sold the product at N1,330 per litre.
The development comes amid growing public expectations that the reduction in Dangote Refinery’s gantry price would quickly translate into lower pump prices nationwide.
Explaining the delay, the President of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), Dr. Billy Gillis-Harry, said retail prices are influenced by several factors beyond refinery gate prices.
Speaking to Channels TV, Gillis-Harry said: “Prices reflecting at the pump are dependent on availability of the product, the other is the cost. The cost of purchasing the product and cost in terms of logistics, and preparing the particular petroleum to be delivered to the people”.
According to him, downward price adjustments often take longer to reach consumers because marketers need to recover the cost of existing stock purchased at higher prices before restocking at lower rates.
When asked why increases in fuel prices are usually reflected immediately while reductions are delayed, Gillis-Harry said the dynamics of supply management play a significant role.
He explained: “It is mainly affected by whether the producer has additional resources or not at the time. Increases in prices are mainly caused by the need to restock. There must be that advantage pushing the price upward to be able to pay for new supplies.”
He further acknowledged that marketers generally seek to exhaust existing inventory before implementing lower prices.
“That’s the basic idea. But in petroleum, a mixture is involved, and loss is taken, though not in a way that affects the capital needed to restock,” he added.
Also speaking on the issue, energy analyst Olabode Sowunmi said fuel pricing in Nigeria is influenced by a combination of domestic supply arrangements and logistics costs, rather than crude oil prices alone.
He noted that although international crude oil prices remain an important factor globally, their impact on local petrol pricing is not always direct.
“Global price of crude oil is a factor internationally and not necessarily in Nigeria,” Sowunmi said.
Explaining that Dangote Refinery operates under arrangements that allow a portion of crude supply to be priced in naira, reducing the direct impact of international market fluctuations on local fuel prices, he said: “So basically the issue will have to be from the point of refinery to where it touches the final person. Logistics costs within the domestic supply chain remain a major determinant of the final pump price paid by consumers.”
Peter Obi, candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), has given assignment to Nigerians to put all those aspiring to take up political positions in the country through the grill to ascertain their level of integrity, saying it was required as a sine qua non for the job they seek.
Obi, who has been a subject of discussion in the polity since the allegation of corruption was levied against him by Kenneth Okonkwo, spokesman of his campaign in 2023, over the conduct of the party’s primaries to choose candidates for the 2027 general elections, said the grilling must start with his own person.
A guest in an interview on a podcast with Rufai Oseni, a popular television anchor, the former Governor of Anambra State, stated that it was actually for this reason that he had now sworn to see the litigation he instituted against Okonkwo through.
His take is that the Nollywood actor should use the courtrooms to give all the details of bad behaviour, following his threat to expose him fully, after alleging that he was collecting money from aspirants in the said election for electoral favours.
Hear him: “The issue of taking Kenneth Okonkwo to court wouldn’t have arisen if he had stopped at those allegations. But he claimed he still has more he would expose about me in the future. So, I am very happy to take him to court so that he can expose me publicly, alongside other Nigerians. If any of them has any criminal allegations against me, they should bring them to court.
“Not just Kenneth, everybody should now say those things they know that is bad about me or I did that is wrong because it’s good for the system, it’s good for the society,” Obi said.
“So, if you know that when we were in primary school, this man was cheating or didn’t go to the primary school, didn’t go to secondary school, didn’t do, if you know this man has done something criminal somewhere, this is time to bring it up.”
For the umpteenth time, Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has warned about the dangerous implication of using state institutions, particularly the judiciary to destroy Nigeria’s democracy, saying it is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good.
Atiku, presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), speaking on the heels of Tuesday’s verdict of the Court of Appeal, halting the de-registration order by the Federal High Court, insisted that judicial officers must not lend themselves to any act capable of undermining the nation’s democratic process.
The appellate court had ordered a stay of execution on the order made on Monday by Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court Abuja, for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deregister the ADC alongside four other political parties).
A totally scandalised Court of Appeal, sitting in Abuja, had taken umbrage, sparing no hard words in upbraiding the lower court judge, stating that his likes were unfit to sit on the bench.
In a unanimous ruling by a three-man panel, the court held that Lifu’s action was “the highest form of judicial impertinence”, stressing that the Supreme Court previously held that a judge who acted in such a manner.
Describing his conduct as the height of judicial rascality, the upper court, stated: “Courts are enjoined to protect their integrity. This Court has supervisory authority over the trial court.
“The decision of the lower court to proceed with the judgment despite the express order of this court is a brazen violation of the hierarchy of the court and the 1999 Constitution.
This court has the duty to invoke its powers in ensuring that its orders are obeyed. The application for a stay of execution is here yet granted. The enforcement of the judgment is stayed.”
Atiku, who hailed the position of the higher court, which restored his hope to be on the ballot as presidential candidate in the 2027 election, also noted the role of INEC as “significant.”
He said: “I welcome the Court of Appeal’s decision to stay the execution of the Federal High Court judgement seeking the deregistration of our great party, the ADC, and four other political parties. It is particularly significant that INEC itself initiated the application for the stay.
“The development reflects growing public concern over judicial contradictions and politically charged rulings within the judiciary. “Any attempt to undermine Nigeria’s hard-won democracy through judicial manipulation is a grave danger to the Republic. If our democracy suffers further injury, history will demand accountability from those entrusted with dispensing justice.
Outside ADC, Lifu’s order, also included: Action Democratic Congress (ADC), Action Peoples Party (APP), Action Alliance (AA), Accord Party (AP) and Zenith Labour Party (ZLP), similarly slammed for allegedly failing to meet the constitutional requirements for continued registration and participation in elections.
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