Former President Olusegun Obasanjo says he chose late Yar'Adua as his successor because the other politicians available at that time were corrupt. According to him, one of those who wanted to succeed him was 'stinkingly corrupt'. He gave his reasons during an interview with Channels TV yesterday July 15th
"Even if you take your son as your successor, you are not sure of what he will do when he gets there. Don’t ever kid yourself. What do I know about any successor? What he presents. When he gets there, he presents it differently. We did our best, but if you say our best is not good enough, I will say, when it comes to your turn, do better.
With all the people that are available for successor, what we came up with was about the best that we could think of at that time. One of those who wanted to do the job came to me and said, ‘Sir, I like your job, but I cannot do it the way you are doing it.’ Now, if he had told me that, should I then come and say, ‘okay, come, let me give you the job?’ He had told me that, ‘I like your job, but look, the way you are doing it, I haven’t got the stamina to do it that way.’ Then, what do you expect me to do? Or the one that I know that, oh!, this one, before he gets the job, he’s stinkingly corrupt. Now will I be able to defend myself before God and man if with what I know I give this job or I encourage the man to have this job?”he said
According to President UMARU MUSA YAR’ADUA, INAUGURAL ADDRESS to us Nigerians, he said and I quote “We are determined to intensify the war against corruption, more so because corruption is itself central to the spread of poverty. Its corrosive effect is all too visible in all aspects of our national life. This is an area where we have made significant progress in recent years, and we will maintain the momentum”. Is this statement still valid???
“Fellow citizens, I ask you all to march with me into the age of restoration. Let us work together to restore our time-honored values of honesty, decency, generosity. The question here is “Are we working together at all now? Because if we do we won’t be missing contact with our President since God knows when.
The president further continues to say “modesty, selflessness, transparency, and accountability. These fundamental values determine societies that succeed or fail. We must choose to succeed” Are we failing now as a nation or we are progressing???
Again the president said “I will set a worthy personal example as your president” I totally disagree with this statement; because currently our own Mr. President is ACTING out of the Nigerian constitution. If not Mr. President wouldn’t have left the Presidential seat empty while He knew He will be out of the country in order to attend to His critical state of Health without HANDING OVER POWER to His Vice as He as earlier said that “I will set a worthy personal example as your president”
I quote Mr. President again saying “To that end I offer myself as a servant-leader, I will be a listener and doer, and serve with humility” Is this, what serving with HUMILITY as Mr. President has said means or what? Serving with humility means you will always do what pleases the citizen you are ruling. Right now Mr. President, Nigerian’s are not happy at all and they are not seeing you as a ROLE MODEL that you have earlier said that you will be, you and your ministers don’t care to listen to the hearth groaning of we Nigerians.
Now come to BBC, Is BBC a Nigerian media house? If not, I think it's not acceptable for our own President to have granted this kind of interview to a foreign media, when Nigerian government spends billions of tax payers' money in funding both a state TV network and a radio network? (NTA), it would have shown maturity, patriotism and leadership by example, if he had granted this interview to a Nigerian media and not BBC.
Meanwhile, we thank God that the president is alive and has finally broken his silence but this fact does not justify his failure to hand over to the vice president. What is he afraid of? Oh! He doesn't believe in his ministers just as he doesn't believe in our health care system too… What a pity on us as a Nation.
Just as I round off, I will like to inform those that surround Mr. President that, He is no longer a private person, he lost his privacy since the day he was elected as the President of the Feral Republic of Nigeria, therefore his health status should not be shrouded in secrecy.
Finally, I will like to say that, the telephone interview with our Mr. President UMARU MUSA YAR’ADUA, by BBC is not enough to convince Nigerians on the state of the President's health. A video interview will be more acceptable to Nigerians.
