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The Coalition for Nigeria (CN) has described the letter purportedly written by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to President Muhammadu Buhari as a desperate attempt to relaunch himself into politics saying the world has run out of patience with demagogues and Nigerians cannot afford the luxury of having one in Obasanjo.
The Coalition also alleged that the former President was working in alliance with agents of destabilisation whom it said some of their leaders have held meetings with those used for staging the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa to perfect their plans of dividing the country.
Addressing a press conference at Top Ranks Hotel in Abuja on Thursday, National President of the Coalition for Nigeria, Patriot Sabo Odeh said it was regrettable that a former President of the country was working tirelessly to infringe pain on the nation for his failure to elongate his tenure.
“The Coalition for Nigeria has learnt with amusement the call by former President Olusegun Obasanjo for a coalition of the concerned and the willing” which he has rushed to christen “Coalition for Nigeria” without making efforts at due diligence to realize that such coalition already exists. Our press briefing here today is not to wrangle over who has the right to use the name “Coalition for Nigeria”. Our goal is to alert Nigeria to the re-emergence of a force that had always mitigated against the wellbeing of the country even while masquerading as good intentions. The name of that threat is Olusegun Obasanjo, who has history of regarding Nigeria as his fiefdom from which he and his offspring are entitled to pillage at every turn.
“The failure of his tenure elongation bid left Obasanjo a bitter old man, who has since that time harbored animosity towards all Nigerians – he sees in all of us enemies that must be punished hence his constant interjections once he sees the country slipping out of the traps and pitfalls he had craftily orchestrated before he grudgingly left office in 2007”.
Though the group agreed with former President Obasanjo that the journey for a greater Nigeria starts now, it however, said the trip that the country would lead to the promised land can only be achieved without him.
“We, the Coalition for Nigeria, agree that there is need to move from our current state of affairs in Nigeria but those that will lead us do not belong to Obasanjo’s circle and certainly not Obasanjo himself.
“We see President Buhari as having fulfilled his place and mission in history, which is to disrupt and overturn the status quo such that his successors, when the time comes, will build on his works to give us the Nigeria of our vision.
“If the Obasanjo government was half as sincere as the present administration, the troubles of today would have not cropped up in the first place. It is most insulting that the same man is today bragging about assembling teams of experts when his terms in office were spent in partitioning the country and allocating huge chunks to his cronies including initiating privatization programmes that simply gifted the country to a mafia”.
The group further explained that had Obasanjo nursed good intentions for the country, in the eight years he spent as a democratically elected President, he would have focused on building strong institutions and enduring systems as opposed to the strong individuals created by his regime adding that, Obasanjo wants to fraudulently recover at a roundabout what he carelessly lost at an intersection.
“Ordinarily we would have disregarded Obasanjo’s latest outburst but for a series of other happenstances that suggest that his letter is part of a larger plot to mislead and destabilize the country. In this regard, the former President appears to be the elder statesmen’s wing of a malcontent rabble that is determined to return Nigeria back to the days of kleptocracy founded by him. Just a few hours before he sent out his cantankerous statement, the street gang called Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) group had sullied the streets with its Red Card campaign. We have wondered if it a mere coincidence that a convener of BBOG, Oby Ezekwesili, was a minister in Obasanjo’s cabinet. This is a group that is known to be on the payroll of neocon entities that are committed to destroying Nigeria.
“We realize that some of those peddling Obasanjo’s statement as the holy grail are trying to desensitize people to its impropriety by claiming that Nigerians should consider the message and not the messenger. But to us, a people who do not see in Obasanjo a messenger that should be disregarded are set for doom because nothing honourable has ever come out this vessel. Even worse than the messenger is the toxic message that was crafted only to satisfy his own agenda of continuing to hold Nigeria in servitude.
“By his own admission, Obasanjo has been undertaking many foreign trips, which we understand are covers for scheming with foreign interests that are closet enemies of our country. It is not farfetched it turns out that he is the conduit that ships in funds for BBOG and other anti-Nigeria groups. We continue to wonder how lower Obasanjo can sink in exacting vengeance against those he thought denied him of a third term in office, which he loosely interprets as all Nigerians. We do not in any way deserve the crisis he is preparing to launch”.