{"id":17649,"date":"2018-01-25T08:35:46","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T08:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=17649"},"modified":"2018-01-25T08:43:04","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T08:43:04","slug":"obasanjo-buhari-dont-understand-nigeria-challenges-by-tony-osborg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=17649","title":{"rendered":"OBASANJO, BUHARI DON’T UNDERSTAND NIGERIA CHALLENGES – by Tony Osborg"},"content":{"rendered":"
There is nothing that President Olusegun Obasanjo said in his statement about President Buhari that we have not said here on social media and before now.<\/div>\n
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The difference between us (Federalists) and Obasanjo is in our solutions. Obasanjo has no pragmatic solution. His solution today is the same he offered in 2015. He still believes Nigeria needs another Messiah.<\/div>\n
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Obasanjo with his typical military mentality (just like Buhari) still believes that Nigeria needs a Messiah. Yes. Obasanjo, just like Buhari, has a unitary military centrist orientation and believes that Nigerians are corrupt animals that must be led by the strongest of all animals, preferably, a military man.<\/div>\n
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This belief is common amongst military men anyway.<\/div>\n
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It is this belief that makes them (Obasanjo and Buhari) both oppose decentralization of economic and political powers. It is what makes them oppose restructuring. No military man wants to see someone he considers junior (governor) possess the same economic and political power as himself. They always will call the shot. Order the police to Benue. Order the Army to Bayelsa. Decide who gets what oil block. Decide which area is more in need of development than the other. Decides what states should be connected by rail. Which city should have an international airport and what grade. Who should get what contract from NNPC and any government agency. Who should be the commissioner of and in control of Police in oil rich Rivers State or booming Lagos state.\u00a0 Which area of Nigeria gets the highest megawatts and so on. They are not willing to give up any power in the interest if Nigerians.<\/div>\n
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No President with military background will want all those powers devolved to bloody civilian governors or innocent localities.<\/div>\n
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In 2014, Obasanjo saw Jonathan as weak and recommended a fellow military man. Today Obasanjo has confirmed that Buhari is even weaker. In 2015, when the Generals (including GMB and OBJ) decided to kick out the bloody civilian Jonathan and make one of their own the new President, it was because they saw that Jonathan (who probably did not know how powerful his office was) was not using 1\/3 of the powers the 1999 military constitution gave to him as President and as such, they (Generals) felt only one of them could do this and save Nigeria.<\/div>\n
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Buhari thought he was tough when he ordered the invasion of judge’s lodge. Off course he knew nothing would happen to him even if he orders the murder of a state governor. He thought he was tough when he refused to obey court judgments. He thought he was tough when he continued with his pretentious ignorant actions and nepotic displays.\u00a0 Every though decision he thought he took showed how weak he was but the hailers hailed.<\/div>\n
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All that Buhari had to offer he has already offered. There is nothing else to offer. He now has three options; restructure Nigeria and become a hero, retire and return to Daura as a failure or invoke all his powers, recontest a second tenure, win the election by whatever means necessary and lord over a people who are already resigned about him, governance and the government of Nigeria. Nigerians have already given up on the Nigerian government, except those feeding directly from the government.<\/div>\n
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PMB thought he was being magnanimous when he gave state bail outs. We complained that it was not a solution and he called us wailers. Today, states are still unable to pay salaries. You cannot continue to sustain a people by giving them allocations, bail outs and all manner of feeding bottle benefits. This is what is wrong with Nigeria; the feeding bottle unitary system.<\/div>\n
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Both Obasanjo and Buhari believe that what military cannot solve, money will solve. There is no room for dialogue. That is the mindset of every corrupt military man. Buhari is no exception. This is why they have refused to participate in the restructuring debate.<\/div>\n
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Even the so called fight against corruption is a fraud. Those of us who benefited from the corruption in PDP administration are still benefiting from the corruption in APC administration. All we needed to do was realign and become saints. Only fools and ignorant fellows will say the PMB administration is fighting corruption. Nothing has changed, just a few players.<\/div>\n
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My problem with Obasanjo is that he has no pragmatic solution.<\/div>\n
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He is about to begin the search for another Messiah. Nigeria does not need a Messiah.<\/div>\n
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The solution that Nigeria needs is restructuring, decentralization and federalism. A heterogeneous society like Nigeria should not and cannot be administered in a highly over-centralized manner. The right of various ethnic groups, autonomous cities and states to have some level of autonomy over their own security, development, culture, resources and people should be considered as axiomatic and incontrovertible.<\/div>\n
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The unitary system which we currently practice is incompatible with our diversity. That is the biggest problem we have in Nigeria today, not PDP, APC, GEJ, PMB or even corruption.<\/div>\n
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Abuja and our state government houses should not continue to control our destinies, development, security and resources.<\/div>\n
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Governance must be brought down to our various localities through restructuring and true federalism. We must adopt a bottom-up approach to governance.<\/div>\n
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Nigeria does not need another Messiah. Nigeria needs a system that empowers the local people to be in charge of their own development, irrespective of who presides over Abuja.<\/div>\n
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Nigeria needs restructuring and true federalism more than it needs the next election.<\/div>\n
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Until we restructure and entrench federalism, voting for these politicians and their political parties will be a waste of resources, energy, time and thumbprints.<\/div>\n
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#RestructureNigeria<\/div>\n
#TrueFederalism<\/div>\n
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Tony Osborg writes for the\u00a0www.RestructureNigeria.ng\u00a0Community<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is nothing that President Olusegun Obasanjo said in his statement about President Buhari that we have not said here on social media and before now. The difference between us (Federalists) and Obasanjo is in our solutions. Obasanjo has no pragmatic solution. His solution today is the same he offered in 2015. He still believes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[182,231,4479],"class_list":["post-17649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-olusegun-obasanjo","tag-president-mohammadu-buhari","tag-restructurenigeria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Nigeria-map.png","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-4AF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17649"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17652,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17649\/revisions\/17652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}