Sheer hypocrisy is what makes Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to accuse today’s INEC of malpractices when the same INEC under him in 2007 organised what was popularly adjudged the worst election in Nigeria’s history through Professor Maurice Iwu (Wuruwuru). So much that the beneficiary of the ill-gotten mandate, President Umar Yar’Adua, openly admitted the glaring irregularities and, as his own atonement, instituted the Uwais Panel to come up with electoral reforms.
- Back in 2003, so brazen was the electoral fraud perpetrated by Obasanjo that in his native Ogun State, the court ruled that the figures announced by INEC for PDP were far more than the number of accredited voters! Obasanjo apparently forgot his calculator. 😁
- So autocratic in behaviour, Obasanjo during his second term infamously tore the results of the selection exercise undertaken by the council of kingmakers in his native Owuland simply because his favourite candidate did not come first.
- Who has forgotten how Obasanjo orchestrated the kidnap of elected Governor (e.g Chris Ngige of Anambra) or the illegal impeachment of others with few compromised lawmakers as was witnessed in Oyo, Plateau, Bayelsa and Ekiti. In some cases, such illegality was later reversed by the Supreme Court.
- So depraved and shameless was OBJ in corruption that the vice president, Atiku Abubakar, once told a senate committee panel that Obasanjo often sent him hand notes to release PTDF funds to buy brand new SUVs for some of his (Obasanjo’s) menopausal concubines.
- Another of Obasanjo’s brazen misuse of public funds early in his first term was the award of a Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) contract for the Port Harcourt refinery to one of his cronies, Emeka Offor, at a whopping $1b. It was another money down the drain as the refinery never worked thereafter.
- A princely $16b was also splashed on phoney electricity contracts under Obasanjo without any tangible change in the nation’s energy condition, according to the House of Representatives report under Speaker Dimeji Bankole.
- While public tertiary institutions were often shut down over FG’s refusal to meet ASUU demands, Obasanjo floated and funded his privately owned Bell University in Otta. It is public knowledge that to win government jobs in Abuja, contractors were often cajoled to go and “donate handsomely” to Obasanjo’s university in Otta.
- A master of confusion or “acting before reflection ala James Bond 007” (apologies Professor Wole Soyinka), Obasanjo once gave out a mouth-watering contract to a crony to demolish all the toll-gates across the country as prelude to the removal of “petrol subsidy”, without consulting the labour movement. Expectedly, NLC declared a crippling national strike which forced Obasanjo to back down on subsidy removal. By then, all the toll-gates had been demolished, amounting to double loss to the government.
- Obasanjo’s Aso Rock was, in fact, a virtual “toll gate” for extorting contractors and favour-seekers, as confirmed by U.S. congress report which indicted Halliburton Company. It was established that for oil contracts, Halliburton shared millions of dollars in bribes around Aso Rock under Obasanjo’s watch. It is public records that the then Personal Assistant (Domestic) to the President admitted to have collected $6m cash from Halliburton agents in Abuja on behalf of … you know who!
- Privatisation exercise under Obasanjo was also turned to a bazaar in which the nation’s patrimony accumulated over the decades and estimated to be worth over US $100b, were given away to cronies and fronts at ridiculous prices. For instance, ALSCON that was built for over $3b by the military administrations of Babangida and Abacha was sold for a paltry $130m!
- In his deluded but failed desperation to become Nigeria’s president-for-life, Obasanjo literarily emptied the national coffers by giving raw cash amounting to N17b to federal lawmakers to insert tenure elongation clause in the report submitted by the 2004/2005 constitutional conference. But once that clause was shot down by allied democratic forces within and outside the National Assembly, Obasanjo abandoned other recommendations contained in the bill altogether like a crate of rotten eggs at his Ota Farms.
- So convinced was T Y Danjuma of Obasanjo’s iniquities and atrocious corruption in office that the Taraba-born General and erstwhile Obasanjo’s supporter famously declared (in an interview granted the Sun newspaper in 2007) that verily, verily “Aremu of Ota deserves another term in jail”.
This is your life Obasanjo!
We urge you to continue to run your basket-mouth. We shall soon publish a compendium of Obasanjo’s “holier than thou” stint at Aso Rock. Watch out!
