Former President Obasanjo has said that the current government of President Muhammadu Buhari has dragged Nigeria down below the status it was in 1999 when he took over.
Obasanjo said this in a letter, where he briefed the youths about his interactions with the 2023 presidential candidates.
He expressed pain that all the presidential candidates promised to do what he did when he took over in 1999 and return the nation to where it was at the height of his administration and immediately after.
“I was pained that most of them do not realise that the Nigeria of today had been dragged down well below Nigeria of the beginning of my Presidency in June 1999,” Obasanjo stated.
While conceding that although Nigeria was in a very bad shape and was tottering on the verge of collapse then, the former president lamented that, “it was not faced with the level of pervasive and mind-numbing insecurity, rudderless leadership, buoyed by mismanagement of diversity and pervasive corruption, bad economic policies resulting in extremes of poverty and massive unemployment and galloping inflation.”
Obasanjo said the instruments used from 1999 to 2007 and the methodology used to save the nation will be inadequate for the “perilous situation we now find ourselves in.”
While not denying the fact that all the major contestants are his mentees because he had worked with all of them directly and indirectly in government, Obasanjo said he had come to realise that character, attributes and attitude are necessary for the job of directing the affairs of Nigeria successfully at a time like this.
According to him, the four major factors to watch out for in a leader during the coming election are what he called TVCP: “Track record of ability and performance; Vision that is authentic, honest and realistic; Character and attributes of a lady and a gentleman who are children of God and obedient to God; and physical and mental capability with soundness of mind as it is a very taxing and tasking assignment at the best of times and more so it is at the most difficult time that we are.”
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