Real Reasons Obasanjo Is Angry

EX-President Olusegun Obasanjo is indeed an angry man. This can be felt from his recent vituperations and invectives he had thrown at the personality of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. The former President is not also sparing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in his barrage of attacks which many analysts have described as unwarranted and demeaning of the personality of the retired army general who had the privilege of being sponsored by the PDP to rule over Nigeria.
Obasanjo who was elected President in 1999 following his release from prison by the then Head of State General Abdulsalami Abubakar had the privilege of ruling over the country for a period of eight years and an added record of presiding over the choice of his successor the late former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and the incumbent President Gooluck Ebele Jonathan.
The ex-president had earned global acclaim in 1979 when he willingly handed power to a democratically elected   civilian administration of Alhaji Aliyu Usman Shehu Shagari after spending nearly four years in the saddle as military head of state following the assassination of Murtala Ramat Mohammed in a bloody coup led by Col. Bukar Sumka Dimka in 1976.
In 1999, Chief Obasanjo whose ascension to power was facilitated by the military took critical policy measures that showed to the whole world that he was not a stooge of the military that helped him back to power.
One of such decision was the compulsory retirement of high ranking military officers who had at one time or the other served as military governors or administrators of states or as ministers during the military interregnum between December 1983 and May 1999. Not spared also were officers who even served as mere Aide d’camps to the military governors.
To President Obasanjo then, the civilian government under his leadership had to take drastic steps to rid the military of what in his words were “political soldiers”.
As a consequence, many young and aspiring officers were retired prematurely with dare consequences on their careers in the military.
President Obasanjo did not just reign over the country, in fact he ruled over it.
He reigned like an emperor in a democratic setting baring the checks and balance that do exist in a democracy among the three arms of government. Put in another way, President Obasanjo had no god father(s). He brooked no challenge to his power and authority.
General Abdulsalami Abubakar (rtd) who handed power to him did not attempt to dictate to him on how to govern the country. He captured the party that brought him to power. He changed its chairmen at will. He was in fact a lord onto himself.
But on the contrary the former president had since April 2012 when he ingloriously relinquished his chairmanship of the PDP Board of Trustees, turned himself into the greatest critic of the Jonathan Administration, besides his refusal to take active part in the activities of the PDP since that period.
Although the ex-president who on Monday February 16, publicly renounced his membership of the PDP and followed it up with the tearing to shreds of his PDP membership card said in his tweets later that day that “I would rather sacrifice my political party for the interest of Nigeria than sacrifice my country for a political party led by a drug baron.
“I would rather tear the PDP card than sit down and let President Jonathan use PDP and corruption to tear my beloved country apart”.
The former president did not stop there. He went further to state that as a man of both national and international repute, he would rather stand alone than belong to the same party with Kasamu. Buruji Kashmu is the official PDP leader of the South West who the ex-President severally vilified in his new book ‘My Watch’.
This is where the crux of the matter lies. It is evident that the ex-president is unhappy with some key elements in the PDP hierarchy to an intolerable state as to exit the party which has been so fair to him in such an indecorous manner as to publicly destroy his party’s membership card.
By this singular act, Chief Obasanjo has proven critics who had described him as irrational, self serving and a hypocrite very right, especially by his own admission that he probably might be wrong in his allegation that President Jonathan is trying to cause general unpleasantness in the country by reason of his attempts to manipulate the 2015 presidential election in his own favour.
If one may ask why should ex-president Obasanjo say anything of a sitting president or any other person for that matter when he is not sure of his facts?
The ex-president bellicose disposition to President Jonathan stemmed from his failed bid to manipulate him to advance his age long wish to be worshiped by every member of the PDP, or any other politician in Nigeria for that matter.
Since this is not happening with the body language of President Jonathan, the ex-president has appointed himself as an attack dog that must see to the end of the administration through fair or foul means.
He accuses President Jonathan of encouraging corruption, unable to provide the youth with jobs, and other sundry perfidious allegations. One is but compelled to ask, ‘what legacies did the Obasanjo eight years rign as a democratic president bequeath to Nigerians for which he wants to be celebrated?
Besides the modest achievements which the Jonathan government has made in the areas where the Obasanjo government failed woefully, Nigerians would not have contemplated the possibility of a credible elections during the do-or-die electoral culture of the Obasanjo era. Nigerians cannot forget in a hurry how the Professor Iwu/Obasanjo INEC did nothing to sanitize our electoral processes which was replete with ballot box snatching and stuffing by politicians and their supporters in their win at all cost attitude of that inglorious era.
The retired general can only succeed in misleading those who do not know his warped democratic ideals of do-or-die politics and a legacy of circumventing the popular wish of Edo people to serve primordial sentiments in the 2007 gubernatorial election in Edo State.
Comrade Governor Adams Oshiomhole wouldn’t have been governor today in Edo State and the wonderful achievements his administration has recorded in several sectors of the economy would have been denied the people of the state.
His claim to love Nigeria more than he loves his party PDP is a tale for the marines.
Chief Obasanjo is simply a frustrated man today as can be seen in his anger.
Available records have shown him as a highly partisan fellow who would rather compromise on matter of national interest to serve selfish interest.
How else does one perceive a president who founds it convenient to render nugatory the decision of the Supreme Court when it affirmed the validity of the governorship ticket of Senator Ifeanyi Ararume in the build up to the 2007 general election in Imo State to serve selfish interest of enthroning his ex- Commerce and Industry Minister Charles Ugwu.
Obasanjo, the now self styled advocate of constitutional democracy had led the PDP heirachy to Owerri the Imo State capital to declare that the PDP had no candidate in the gubernatorial race of the state despite the Supreme Court decision affirming Senator Ararume as the party’s candidate.
Some one also needs to remind ex-president Obasanjo that the massive corruption that led to the subterfuge that produced Sir Celestine Omelua as governor of Rivers State in 2007 when he never participated in the party’s processes leading to the selection of the party’s gubernatorial candidate.
Obasanjo should tell us what his role was in the crass corruption that characterized that process. If this was no corruption, he should tell us what it was.
How much of the ex-president’s malfeasances can space permit us here to enumerate? How much can one tell of his high handedness in picking and choosing which state governor to be hounded using the instrumentality of the Nuhu Ribadu’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Nigerians were witnesses to the flagrant violation of the constitutional provisions guiding impeachment of serving state governors.
They were also witnesses to instance where legislators were coaxed and intimidated by officials of the Ribadu EFCC to impeach governors who had fallen out of favour with Chief Obsasanjo.
Ex-Governors  Diepreye Alamyiesiegha of Bayelsa, Dr. Joshua Dariye of Plateau, Rasheed Ladoja of Oyo, and Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti as well as Mr. Peter Obi of Anambra all of whom had their respective mandates truncated by the marauding Chief Obasanjo political vampires, have got a lot to say about Saint Obasanjo.
Back to the real reasons ex-president Obasanjo is angry with President Jonathan to the extent of plotting his ouster. Feelers from the ex-president’s associates indicate that OBJ is unable to take the seeming bitter pill President Jonathan has offered him by his decision to be his own man and not the puppet OBJ had wished him to be.
Matters reportedly came to their heads in early 2012 when the ex-president discovered to his chagrin that the puppet Jonathan had refused to accept all his nominees for board and committee appointments including consulting with him first before any major party decisions could be taken.
The president was said to have reminded him of his role as the BOT chairman which is principally advisory and not binding on either the party or his cabinet. This of course did not go down well with him prompting his resignation as its chairman.
The sudden decision by OBJ to resign from the position he while in office compelled a revision of the party’s constitution to confer the privilege for appointment as BOT Chairman only on ex-elected presidents and ex-party chairmen came to many as a rude shock.
Emerging facts latter revealed that the ex-president had tried unsuccessfully to use the platform to dictate the way the government would be run. Since that time, the former president had begun the plot for President Jonathan’s ouster.
Recall that the recalcitrant ex-PDP aggrieved governors had OBJ as their chief mentor
The aggrieved governors which initially had Governor Sule Lamido, Babangida Aliyu, Magatarkada Wamako, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, Usman Dankingari and latter Chibuike Amaechi were proponent of power shift to the North which they claimed was a fallout of an unwritten agreement Jonathan had signed in 2011 to serve only one term of four years as president.
When this could not pull through owing to the president’s constitutional right to seek re-election, Obasanjo resorted to shopping for Jonathan challenger within the PDP. This also could not fly because the PDP has a tradition of offering a sitting president the right of first refusal in the presidential contest, a privilege OBJ himself enjoyed to the fullest when he was re-elected in 2003.
These governors except Governors Aliyu and Lamido together with some top notch of the PDP later broke off and formed what was known then as the new PDP before defecting to the All Progessive Congress (APC).
OBJ reportedly did not give up as he made the last push to get President Jonathan to drop his loyal deputy, Vice President Namadi Sambo for his preferred candidate, Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State for the office. President Jonathan’s refusal to yield to this  analyst believe was the last straw that broke the camel’s back in OBJ and President Jonathan’s relationship prompting Obasanjo to shift camp to the opposition All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate General Mohammed Buhari whose presidential aspiration got his endorsement recently.