Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has expressed grave concerns over the increased banditry in the north-west region of the country, where President Muhammadu Buhari hails from.
Obasanjo asked Buhari to wake up and fight banditry and other growing crimes, especially in the northern part of Nigeria.
The ex-President spoke on Sunday in a virtual interview with academic and historian, Toyin Falola, urging Buhari to start leaving an enduring legacy as President.
The ex-President said, “I thought I knew President Buhari because he worked with me. But I used to ask people that is it that I have not read him well or read him adequately or is it that he has changed from the Buhari that I used to know? I am not subscribing to the people who say we have a new Buhari from Sudan and all that nonsense.
“I know what I believed was his limitations and I have written about it –he wasn’t strong in economics, not all of us are strong in anything but you need to have sufficient knowledge of it for you to direct the affairs. He wasn’t particularly too strong in foreign affairs but I thought he was strong enough in the military.
“From his performance in his first outing as head of state, I thought he would also do well in fighting corruption. I did not know the nepotistic tendencies of President Buhari maybe because he was not exposed to that sort of situation when he worked with me.
“But with what I have seen now, I believe that maybe he will be thinking of a legacy. Maybe he will also learn from what has happened in recent times. If you are the commander-in-chief and banditry is taking place in your backyard, then you have to wake up.”
He added that some governors are now in hopelessness state because of Buhari’s way of handling the insecurity in the country.
The security challenges in the country have assumed a new dimension in recent as rampaging bandits, bloodthirsty insurgents and ransom-demanding kidnappers terrorize Nigerians with daring audacity.
One of the high-profile cases of criminalities was on December 11, 2020 stormed Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina the same day the president arrived in Daura, and abducted over 300 schoolboys who were later released after some six days.
Some of the kidnapped victims have not been fortunate as some of these captors mauled, raped and killed their abductors.
The spate of insecurity, especially in the backyard of President Muhammadu Buhari’s North-West and North-East had ignite the clamor for the sacking of the service chiefs.
Last week, Buhari appointed new service chiefs but Obasanjo said it was nothing to be cheery about, adding that the success or failure of the new commandants would be obvious in the next six months.
He said, “Recently, the president changed his service chiefs after they have been there for more than five years without any perceptible improvement and some people started jubilating.
“Somebody spoke to me and said, ‘Oh, you are not enthused’, and I said, ‘I am not’. The person said, ‘Why?’ And I said I don’t know any of those people that have been appointed as service chiefs but you will hear my comments three to six months from now because within that period, we should be able to show what they can do. And if they cannot bring about any perceptible change or improvement then you can write them off as failures.”
Obasanjo also advised the Buhari regime to better equip the security forces and provide them with the right motivation for them to succeed.
