Former President Olusegun Obasanjo came down hard on President Jonathan's administration on how ihe is handling the issue of Boko Haram and corruption in the country. He said this in Warri as the moderator of a public lecture by former External Affairs Minister Prof Bolaji Akinyemi in honour of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) President Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, who is marking his 40th anniversary as a pastor. According to his words “My fear is that when you have a sore and you don’t attend to it early enough, it festers and becomes very bad. Don’t leave a problem that can be bad unattended.”
Reflecting on the crisis at Odi, Obasanjo said: “I attended to a problem that I saw; I sent soldiers. They were killed, 19 of them (were) decapitated. If I had allowed that to continue, I would not have the authority to send security anywhere again. I attended to it. “If you say you do not want a strong leader, who can have all the characteristics of a leader, including the
fear of God, then, you have a weak leader and the rest of the problem is yours,” he added. In his reaction to comments on rising corruption by public office holders in Akinyemi’s paper, Obasanjo blamed the weakened anti-corruption fight on his successor. “At one time, they said the fear of (Mallam Nuhu) Ribadu, former Chairman of the Economic and Economic Crimes Commission (EFCC), is the beginning of wisdom. Then, what happened to Ribadu? And there was no longer any wisdom,” he added.
You have to love, as he called a spade a spade.
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