The Presidency on Sunday berated former President Olusegun Obasanjo for criticising the state of the nation under President Muhammadu Buhari.
Obasanjo, who spoke on Thursday in Abuja at a consultative dialogue attended by regional socio-cultural groups, said: “Nigeria is fast drifting to a failed and badly divided state. Economically, our country is becoming a basket case and poverty capital of the world and socially, we are firming up as an unwholesome and insecure country.”
A response issues by the Presidency described him as descending “from lofty height of Commander-in-Chief to the lowly level of Divider-in-Chief”.
A statement by Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on Media and Publicity, described Obasanjo attack on Buhari as “unfair”, adding that Obasanjo should “in accordance with his mantra as a statesman, get involved with problems solving, when and where they exist instead of helping the mushrooming of a poisonous atmosphere of ethnic and religious nationalism.
The Presidency observed that unlike Obasanjo, the Buhari led Nigerian Government has led efforts to implement term limits in West African States under the ECOWAS framework.
The statement also noted the successful removal of subsidy by the President Buhari government, adding that Obasanjo and his Peoples Democratic Party cohort could not achieve because of greed.
It added, “This President has run an administration focused on infrastructure and development. He has repaired our damaged relations with neighbours and our traditional allies such as the UK, US, China, Russia, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia and the others with lots of benefits to the country.
“Having cleared this misperception, we hope that Chief Obasanjo would once again sheath the sword and rest the pretentiousness about the Messiah that has (mis)led him to pronounce often wrongly, as he disastrously did in the 2019 elections, about the life and death of Nigerian governments.
