Why I Am Giving My Support To Buhari — Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has raised alarm about the postponement of presidential elections and has publicly endorsed Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign to unseat Goodluck Jonathan in 2015.

Obasanjo was in Nairobi to launch a 1,500-page autobiography highly critical of Jonathan, a former protégé whose ascent to the presidency he helped to engineer. The book has been banned in Nigeria pending libel hearings brought by an ally of the president.

“The signs are not auspicious” in the wake of the six-week postponement of the general election, said Gen Obasanjo, who remains an influential, if contentious, figure at home. “I don’t know whether a script is being played,” the Financial Times of London reported.

Coming from a founding member of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, his public endorsement of the main opposition challenger underscores the extent to which Jonathan has lost backing from sections of the establishment, FT said.

This is the first time Obasanjo has come out openly to support Gen Buhari, 72, who ruled Nigeria briefly in the 1980s.

“The circumstances [Buhari] will be working under if he wins the election are different from the one he worked under before, where he was both the executive and the legislature — he knows that,” said Gen Obasanjo. “He’s smart enough. He’s educated enough. He’s experienced enough. Why shouldn’t I support him?”

He also believes Gen Buhari would be well equipped to combat corruption and restore fighting spirit to an army that has struggled in the face of the onslaught by Boko Haram, which has seized a swath of territory in the northeast.

“It’s a question of leadership — political and military,” Gen Obasanjo said of the crisis facing the army. “I think you need to ask [Jonathan] how has he let [the army] go to this extent . . . Many things went wrong: recruitment went wrong; training went wrong; morale went down; motivation not there; corruption was deeply ingrained; welfare was bad.”

Obasanjo also expressed dismay at the extent to which billions of dollars in oil revenues had “all disappeared” since he left office, with abaout $20bn more in rainy day savings.

Nigeria’s economy has taken a battering since last year with the plunge in oil prices. Speaking ironically of the negative impact of this on government reserves, Obasanjo added: “There’ll be less in the pot, for stealing or corruption.”