Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has on Sunday publicly endorsed Peter Obi to win the 2023 presidential election.
Obasanjo declared for Obi in an open letter to the youths in Nigeria.
The letter coincides with the New Year celebration and comes eight weeks to the general polls.
Full text of the letter reproduced below.
MY APPEAL TO ALL NIGERIANS PARTICULARLY YOUNG NIGERIANS
Happy New Year! May all our national calamities disappear this year.
I am constrained to write this letter to all Nigerians, especially
young Nigerians, friends of Nigeria globally as well as our development
partners because of the gravity, responsibility and implications of the
collective decision Nigerians, both young and old, will be making within
the next two months.
The last seven and a half years have no doubt been eventful and
stressful years for many Nigerians. We have moved from the frying pan to
the fire and from the mountain top to the valley. Our leaders have done
their best, but their best has turned out to be not the best for
Nigeria and Nigerians at home and abroad. For most Nigerians, it was
hell on earth.
Those of us who are alive should thank God for His mercies, brace
ourselves for the remaining few months of this administration and pray
and work very hard for an immediate better future – future of
liberation, restoration and great hope and expectation.
We have had campaigners going up and down the country feeding us
with what they mean and what they do not mean, what they understand and
what they do not fully understand, what is possible and what is not
possible, what is realistic and what is unrealistic, what is true and
what is untrue. I believe that we need not be confused nor be gullible.
Let us be cautious, not to be fooled again.
I have interacted with the major contestants and I find it
interesting that, in one form or the other, each of them claims to want
to do what I did during my Presidency and to take Nigeria back to where
it was at the height of my Presidency 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.
Although at that time, Nigeria was in very bad shape and was
tottering on the verge of collapse and break-up. Even then, Nigeria 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.
For these reasons, I kept pointing out to them that the instruments
used in 1999 to 2007 and methodology used will grossly be inadequate
for the perilous situation we now find ourselves in.
Without prejudice but with greatest respect to each individual with
utmost regard for the best for Nigeria and all Nigerians and from my
personal experience, all the major contestants claim to be my mentees. I
will not deny such positions since I have worked with all of them
directly and indirectly in government.
I have come to realise a number of factors in character, attributes
and attitude that are necessary in the job of directing the affairs of
Nigeria successfully and at a time like this. These characteristics or
attributes are many but let us be mindful of some key ones together.
From interaction and experience, and as mentees as most of them
claim, I will, without prejudice, fear or ill-will, make bold to say
that there are four major factors to watch out for in a leader you will
consider to hoist on yourself and on the rest of Nigerians in the coming
election and they are what I call 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.
Let me say straight away that ‘Emi Lokan’ (My turn) and ‘I have
paid my dues’ are one and the same thing and are wrong attitude and
mentality for the leadership of Nigeria now. They cannot form the new
pedestal to reinvent and to invest in a new Nigeria based on an
All-Nigeria Government for the liberation and restoration of Nigeria.
Such a government must have representation from all sectors of our
national life – public, private, civil society, professional, labour,
employers, and the diaspora. The solution should be in ‘we’ and ‘us’ and
not in ‘me’ and ‘I’.
Mind you, I reiterate that no human being is an angel let alone a
Messiah, but there are elements of these attributes and on comparative
basis and by measure of what we know of, and what some of us have
experienced from the front-runners, we must assess judiciously and
choose wisely. If anybody claims he or she has anything to the contrary,
it will be up to him or her to prove to us.
I pray not to be proved right again in the bad sense but rather to
be proved right in the positive and glorious sense of Nigeria becoming
what God had created it to be – a land of plenty and prosperity united
for common purpose of inclusive society, common security, shared
prosperity, equity, egalitarianism, justice, and equal stake in the
Project Nigeria with leadership role of Nigeria for the black race and
fair share of global division of labour.
One ridiculous point that has been touted to justify unjustifiable
appointments and selections is ‘competence’. In truth and in reality,
genuine competence can be found in any region or section of Nigeria
through track record and performance if only people will honestly and
sincerely look hard for people with such attainment and attribute. Most
of us in good conscience can testify to competence when we see any
anywhere. What is masqueraded as ‘competence’ is self-interest and
nepotism.
We have a unique opportunity to correct ourselves by ourselves for
the good of ourselves. Those who are preaching division, segregation,
separation, and want to use diversity for their own self and selfish
interest are enemies of the nation, no matter what else they may
disguisedly profess or proclaim.
The Challenge Is For Nigerian Youth:
If we fall prey again, we will have ourselves to blame and no one
can say how many more knocks Nigeria can take before it tips over. To be
forewarned is to be fore-armed. Future is not emotion. I challenge the
youth to arise. Let nobody pull wool over your eyes to divide you and/or
segregate you to make you underlings. Nigerian youth, wherever they
come from, North or South, East or West need education which is now
denied to over 20 million children; Nigerian youth also need skills,
empowerment, employment, reasonably good living conditions, welfare and
well-being.
My dear young men and women, you must come together and bring about
a truly meaningful change in your lives. If you fail, you have no one
else to blame. Your present and future are in your hands to make or to
mar. The future of Nigeria is in the same manner in your hands and
literally so. If for any reason you fail to redeem yourself and your
country, you will have lost the opportunity for good and you will have
no one to blame but yourselves and posterity will not forgive you. Get
up, get together, get going and get us to where we should be. And you,
the youth, it is your time and your turn. ‘Eyin Lokan’ (Your turn).
The power to change is in your hands. Your future, my future, the
future of grandchildren and great grandchildren is in your hands.
Politics and elections are numbers game. You have the numbers, get up,
stand up and make your numbers count.
Let me say it again, loud and clear, Nigeria has no business with
insecurity, poverty, insurgency, banditry, unemployment, hunger, debt,
division and disunity. We are in these situations because advertently or
inadvertently, our leaders have made the choices. They have done the
best they could do. Let them take their rest deservedly or not and let
them enjoy their retirement as Septuagenarians or older.
I became Head of State at 39 and at 42, I had retired into the
farm. When it was considered necessary, I was drafted back into active
political life after twenty years of interregnum. I came back at 62 and
by 70, I was on my way out. Others like General Gowon and Enahoro became
national leaders at 33 and 27 respectively and General Gowon at the
helms of leadership of Nigeria at the highest level.
The vigour, energy, agility, dynamism and outreach that the job of
leadership of Nigeria requires at the very top may not be provided as a
septuagenarian or older. I know that from personal experience. And it is
glaring out of our current experiences. Otherwise, we will be fed with,
“The President says” and we will neither see nor hear him directly as
we should.
Yes, for some, age and physical and mental disposition are not in
tandem. But where and when they are with obvious evidence, they must be
taken into account for purpose of reality. And yet it is a job in our
present situation where the team leader or captain of the team should be
up and doing, outgoing inside and outside and speaking to the nation on
almost daily basis visibly and as much as possible interactively and
meeting his colleagues all over the world on behalf of Nigeria.
Youth of Nigeria, your time has come, and it is now and please
grasp it. If not now, it will be never. I appeal to you to turn the tide
on its head and march forward chanting ‘Awa Lokan’ (Our turn) not with a
sense of entitlement, but with a demonstrable ideological commitment to
unity and transformation of Nigeria.
Leave The Past, Face The Future:
Can we let the past go? I appeal to the young Nigerians to stop
inheriting other people’s prejudices and enemies. Make your own friends
and stop inheriting your father’s enemies. Let’s stop criminalizing and
demonizing one another on the basis of the civil war on which we are all
wrong.
And let’s praise and thank God for preserving the oneness of
Nigeria. The Scripture says that if God would take account of all our
wrongdoings, nobody would be able to stand before Him. While not
suffering from amnesia, let us stop still fighting and reacting to the
civil war in our hearts, minds, heads and our attitude acrimoniously.
Let’s stop living on our different wrongs or mistakes of the past:
treasonable felony, Tiv riot and its handling, first military coup and
its aftermath, second military coup, araba, pogrom and the civil war,
all in the 1960s.
And more recently OPC, Egbesu, MASSOB, IPOB, Boko Haram and
banditry. No region can claim to be innocent or to be saintly. And no
justification will suffice. In our respective individual or regional
positions, we have done right and we have done wrong. It is therefore
not right for any of us to be sanctimonious to see ourselves as saints
and the rest as devils incarnate.
Just let us agree to move forward together in mutual forgiveness,
one accord, inclusive society, equality and equity. Together and without
bias and discrimination, fear or favour, we can have Nigeria of one
nation in diversity, in truth and in practice. Let us honour, cherish,
respect and even celebrate our diversity which is the basis of our
potential greatness and strength. If we will only continue to harp on
wrongs done by each of us individually or collectively, we will never be
able to stand together.
If we will continue with wide brush to paint a national or
sub-national group as bad and never to be trusted with leadership
because of past error or mistakes that some of them were responsible for
and treat their offspring as inheritors, it will amount to great
injustice that will surely lead to no peace, no security and no
stability for development and progress.
First, no group is faultless; second, for the greatness of the
whole, we need one another as constituents of the whole; third, we
cannot be talking and working for Africa’s integration and for Nigeria’s
disintegration at the same time. Why for instance should I be
stigmatized or despised because of my place of origin, place of birth or
where I come from? Where I was born, by whom I was born and when I was
born were not choices made by me. They were choices and prerogatives of
God.
Any antagonism against me on that basis is unfair and is tantamount
to fighting against God, the Creator. Such derogatory attitude and
mindset do not build any human institution let alone a nation. While not
forgetting the past, let us put the past behind us for it not to
continue to mar our present and our future and that of the coming
generation.
We must rise above primordial animalistic instincts and behaviour.
Yes, we are human and higher than animals in the wild. Let us develop
national ethos and national characteristics that can take us
collectively to the promised.
My dear young men and women, let me assure you that there are only
two tribes of people in Nigeria a tribe of good people and a tribe of
bad people. You are either a good Nigerian of Igbo extraction, Kanuri
extraction, etc, or a bad Nigerian of Yoruba extraction, Ijaw extraction
etc.
I will at this juncture want to commend the politicians as they
have generally been reasonably civil in their campaigns without making
politics as a call to war against opponents. Genuine and fair
competition conveys greater legitimacy in any political rivalry or
competition.
A situation where people in authority and power assume such
positions through foul and despicable means and continue to espouse and
act in ways that only engender conflict or war by subverting legitimacy
of power and authority does not augur well for the polity and as such,
the moral foundation of the government and the society will be terribly
weakened.
May God help, save, protect and sustain Nigeria for all Nigerians,
for Africa and for the human race. We can only continue to play politics
of ethnicity, religion, region and money bags at the peril of our
country and to self-destruction. We need selfless, courageous, honest,
patriotic, in short, outstanding leadership with character and fear of
God beyond what we have had in recent past.
None of the contestants is a saint but when one compares their
character, antecedent, their understanding, knowledge, discipline and
vitality that they can bring to bear and the great efforts required to
stay focused on the job particularly looking at where the country is
today and with the experience on the job that I personally had, Peter
Obi as a mentee has an edge.
Others like all of us have what they can contribute to the new
dispensation to liberation, restoration and salvaging of Nigeria
collectively. One other important point to make about Peter is that he
is a needle with thread attached to it from North and South and he may
not get lost. In other words, he has people who can pull his ears, if
and when necessary. Needless to say that he has a young and able running
mate with clean track record of achievement both in public and private
life.
In conclusion, I want to bring to our remembrance part of the great
speech that Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa made on October 7, 1960, on
the occasion of Nigeria being admitted as the 99th member of the United
Nations: “Cooperation is for each man to be true to his religious belief
and to reaffirm the basic principles of his particular creed.
It may be that, when we hear the world crying out for peace, we may
receive the inspiration to deal with these intractable problems and be
able to really devote all our resources to the advancement of mankind by
applying those eternal truths which will inevitably persist long after
we ourselves are utterly forgotten”.
The Tafawa Balewas are gone. But the eternal truths inevitably
remain and persist that cooperation, friendship, justice, equity, love
and fear of God which are hallmarks of the three religions practised in
this country are the basis of our full and fulfilled lives and living as
Nigerians. In faith as Nigerians, we must pray and relate with God as
it depends on Him and at the same time, in faith also we must work as it
depends on us. Then we will win.
May God continue to help us individually and collectively.
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