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Former President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday in Ibadan lambasted the younger generation of political leaders in the country saying ‘’they had poor performance record in terms of integrity and probity.”
Obasanjo spoke at the 4th Annual Ibadan Sustainable Development Summit organised by Centre for Sustainable Development, University of Ibadan in collaboration with African Sustainable Development Network.
But in Kano, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Umar Ghali Na’Abba queried the landmark wealth of the former president saying that he was bankrupt before he assumed the presidency in 1999.
While responding to issues of poor leadership in Africa, Obasanjo stated that the crop of younger generation of leaders in the country failed the citizens.
He made specific references to his Vice, Atiku Abubakar; former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu; former Speaker, House of Representatives, Alhaji Salisu Buhari; former Bayelsa State governor, Deprieye Alamesiegha and others as younger generation of leaders who failed the country.
He said during his administration as president, “We had some people who were under 50 years in leadership positions. One of them was James Ibori, where is he today? One of them was Alamesiegha, where is he today? Lucky Igbinedion, where is he today?
“The youngest was the Speaker, Buhari, you can still recall what happened to him. You said Bola Tinubu is your master. What Buhari did was not anything worse than what Bola Tinubu did.
“We got them impeached. But in this part of the world some people covered up the other man. The man claimed he went to Government College, Ibadan but the governor (Oyo State) went to Government College and packed all the documents so that they would not know that he did not go there.
“I wanted someone who would succeed me so I took Atiku. Within a year, I started seeing the type of man Atiku is. And you want me to get him there?
“It is sad that after 53 years of independence we have no leader that we can commend. Then we are jinxed and cursed; we should all go to hell. The problem in Africa is that when one person takes over he would not see any good thing that his predecessor did. Let us condemn but with caution”.
Na’Abba, attesting the fact to Obasanjo being bankrupt because of failures in his businesses while he was under incarceration, said upon becoming the president, he knew that the most important thing he needed to do was to accumulate money with which to resuscitate his businesses and which he did headlong.
The former Speaker stated this in a Hausa programme ‘Barka da Hantsi’ which was monitored in a local station, Freedom Radio in Kano.
Obasanjo who was then serving a life jail term for treasons, but was pardoned, was made to contest the presidency on a platter of gold while he has then, completely become poor that he could not vouch for even N20, 000 let alone finance his campaign.
Ex-speaker Ghali Na’ Abba while narrating reasons behind the House move to impeach Obasanjo, pointed to few of the reasons which included flagrant violation of the constitution as well as abuse of office, all of which were impeachable offences, which include non-implementation of the Appropriation Act.
Na’ Abba said Obasanjo fragrantly refused to adhere to budget estimates and that he (Obasanjo) was on a revenge mission against the North, especially Kano State because of late Gen. Abacha who incarcerated him for treason.
Na’ Abba also averred that Obasanjo tried to leave Kano uncovered in development projects so that even when he needed to go to the state in 2007 for campaign, he commissioned only one water project a day to the campaign to enable him mention it as part of his campaign gimmick.
He lamented the excesses of the executive arm of government at the time and said that he even advocated the establishment of a National Assembly police which could be ordered to arrest any government functionary who flouts National Assembly order of summon rather than use the regular police that appear more loyal to the executive arm.