Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has again criticised the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration for always giving unnecessary excuses and not doing enough in rescuing the country out of its present challenges.
Playing host to a group of young professionals under the aegis of Nigerian Young Professionals Forum and New Nigeria 2019 in his hometown, Abeokuta, Mr Obasanjo advised the youth to take charge of their destiny instead of waiting for tomorrow that may never come.
The former president also urged the youth to ignore excuses from leaders he described as incompetent and ineffective.
Mr Obasanjo suggested that a coalition of all the movements in the country and poaching of the ‘uninfected members’ of the leprous APC and PDP to join the mass coalitions, would bring about the needed change in leadership in 2019.
“The point is this: the way to wrest power is to know that those that are there, you have to carry them along so that they will willingly (yield space).. So that they will not be frightened, they will not be intimidated.
“But this time, for us to make it, we need all hands on deck. You see, I have publicly said and I mean it, that as a party, neither PDP nor APC can get us there as they have been.
“Never mind about reforms and apology and all that, and yet we have to get there. I asked one of the foundation members of PDP, the PDP when we started, was it a grassroots party? He said it was an elitist party.
“Really, we have never had the so-called grassroots party. Even NEPU which we could say is the nearest, was not grassroot enough.
“And I believe strongly that we must have a strong popular grassroots movement to bring about the change, sustainability and stability that we need in our democracy and development.
“I am happy to meet with you but don’t take anything for granted. There will be a lot of work that we have to do.
“What those I call power addicts would want to do is to divide you based on gender, age, tribe, religion and region. You have one commonality – interest of Nigeria.
“And it doesn’t matter where you come from. We had that interest. The truth is this: when you have an ineffective and incompetent government, we are all victims.
“And don’t let anybody deceive you. Those of you who are in business, your business could have been better today if we have a competent and effective and performing government.
“As I said, stop giving excuses; we met challenges. If there are no challenges, then we wouldn’t need you to come. You come in because you know there are challenges and then giving us excuse that you have many challenges, that is why you haven’t achieved results.
“And then you still want to go. The first lesson I learnt in my military training is never reinforce failure. What we have now is failure. Never you reinforce failure. Let failure be failure.
“And if you do not see what you should see, you will then be a victim of what you don’t like because it’s only when you see what you should see and you do what you should do that you put away what you do not like.
“And if you don’t see what you should see and you don’t do what you should do, you will be a victim of what you don’t like.
“But let us bring together all these movements because we are pursuing the same thing. If we allow ourselves to be take piecemeal, it is finished. Now if we are together… Yes, I said you cannot take PDP as it is and APC as it is; but they are not all made of evil people.
“There are good people. I said PDP is leprous hand, APC is leprous hand, but there are some clean fingers in them. So, let’s take those clean fingers in them and graft the clean fingers in our own.
“That is the way to go and if we go that way, we will get there, we will move together, and we will move fast and we will move far,” Mr Obasanjo said.
