- Chief Olusegun Obasanjo's letter to President Buhari has generated mixed reactions
- The PDP leadership said its party remains the hope of Nigerians
- The Buhari support group said the former president has no moral right to criticise the president
More top politicians in the country have reacted to former president, Olusegun Obasanjo’s letter to President Muhammadu Buhari criticising his administration and asking him to seek re-election in the 2019 elections.
In a letter to the president, Obasanjo noted some of the area where the Buhari administration has failed to deliver and said it was best for him not to contest in 2019.
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The Nation reports that Uche Secondus who is the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said the party remains the only hop of Nigerians.
He said: “The government of APC has become a lame duck after the former President Olusegun Obasanjo released a political tsunami and verdict on it”
“Our nation is in a situation where PDP must save this nation from total collapse.
“We shall be engaging most of you even at emergency level. As we move, it will be so dynamic in nature. Feel free, this party belongs to all of us.
“We have opened the party up; no one single person owns this party. No one single individual can direct; it must be collective leadership. That is what is going to give us victory.
“Very soon, we shall roll out our programme; we are going to embark on online membership drive and it is going to be aggressive.
“We also want to assure you that members of the NWC are not ready to sit at Wadata in the confines of air-conditioner.
“We want to roll out our suites and move to the states and the local government and we will get to the wards and, if possible the units, to seek for membership. So you will join us in your states”.
Sule Lamido who is the former governor of Jigawa state said the Buhari administration was no respecter of divert views.
He said: "APC and the president have no capacity, they have no knowledge, no political sagacity; they can’t lead Nigeria. If we allow APC to continue, this country will perish.”
Lamido said President Buhari would have been impeached for allegedly declaring that he would only work for regions that voted him into power.
“For a government which says I can only work where I got my own votes, which means from the beginning, the culture of hate has been there. Nigeria is for all Nigerians. In saner countries, the president would have been impeached for declaring that he would work in areas where he got votes.”
“The Buhari administration is intolerant of divergent views. Critics are often “maligned, demonized and blackmailed,”
Hon Kassim Mohammad Kassim who is the national chairman of the Democratic Youths Congress for Buhari 2019 said Obasanjo’s letter was an open confrontation against the north.
He said: "As a lawmaker and the national chairman of a youths support group for Buhari, I want to categorically say that, not because I am a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) or running a campaign team for Buhari, but as a matter of fact, Nigerians will agree with me that some of our past leaders are the problem of this country.
”Why I am saying this is that I want to specifically respond to former President Olusegun Obasanjo because Nigerians will agree that when Obasanjo was President, all his activities were centred on himself alone and that was why he wanted the third term to remain in power and die in power but since that plan was truncated, he became demoralised and felt so bad that Nigerians rejected him to that extent because he was not having any agenda that could promote this country. But because he has seen that with what is happening and the way things are moving, Nigerians won’t mind to ask Buhari to continue for even more than two terms and that is why he is raising issues to create more confusion and to add more crisis to the existing crisis. Nobody would wish to see the system collapsing; so, as good citizens, we say ‘no’ to that but we condemn Obasanjo’s ploy to create relevance for himself by creating tension in the polity.”
Meanwhile, Orji Kalu, a former governor of Abia state, has hit back at Obasanjo over his letter to President Buhari criticising his alleged poor handling of the economy and advising against contesting the 2019 presidential election.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Kalu spoke at the Murtala Muhammed Airport 2, Lagos, stating that Obasanjo had no moral right to comment on such national issues.
The former governor added that Buhari’s government may be slow in taking critical decisions, but had done well in tackling corruption.
According to him, Buhari had recorded modest achievements in his two and half years tenure, which necessitates his re-election.
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Source: Naija.ng