Why Buhari Is Plotting Against Me – Obasanjo

Agency ReporterJune 9, 2018

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Former President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday alleged that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari was planning to arrest him, saying his name was already on its security watch-listover his hard stance on the government.

The former president had in a letter to Buhari in January advised him not to run for second term, scoring the administration low on several fronts. He followed up at different fora by asking Nigerians to vote out the government in 2019.

Buhari on his part had hit back at the former president whom he indirectly accused of blowing $16bn on the power sector without any result.

Obasanjo in a statement through his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, yesterday said he got credible intelligence report that his name had been marked down, with a plot to assassinate him.

According to the statement, part of the grand design is to seize the former president’s international passport and throw him in detention to prevent him from further criticizing Buhari.

Obasanjo also said another plot being hatched against him was to cause the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to re-open investigation into the activities of his administration using false witnesses and documents.

The statement said: “Since Chief Obasanjo declared in his special statement on January 23, 2018, the desperation to frustrate, intimidate and blackmail him into abandoning his divine mandate to protect the rights of the people to better life and living continued unabated and has even taken a bizarre dimension.

“Impeccable security sources have alleged Chief Obasanjo’s name is on their watch-list and that the security of his life cannot be guaranteed.

“According to these informants, many of who are in the top echelon of the nation’s security management and close to the corridors of power, the operatives are daily perfecting how to curtail the personal liberties of the former president and hang a crime on him.

“This government has demonstrably exhibited apathy, and in some cases, encouraged by its conduct, daily loss of lives and property in many states of the country, the office cannot be indifferent.

“The same EFCC that had conducted a clinical investigation on the activities of Obasanjo in and out of government, it was said, would now be made to stand down the existing report that gave Chief Obasanjo a clean bill of health on the probes are now to get him indicted, fair or foul for possible prosecution and persecution like it is being done to real and perceived opponents, enemies and critics of this government,” the statement added.

The former president however insisted that he would not be cowed into jettisoning his divine mandate to protect the rights of Nigerians.

The statement reiterated Obasanjo’sreadiness to face probe before an independent, objective and credible panel of enquiry to account for his stewardship in government and beyond.

It said the government and its supporters should understand that no amount of campaign of calumny would deter him from calling a “spade by its name”.

Obasanjo said Speaker Yakubu Dogara may face the kind of harassment by security agencies that Senate President Bukola Saraki is currently facing. He said he had received credible information of a plot against the speaker to give him the Saraki treatment.