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Obasanjo very intelligent, gifted with mischief – Audu Ogbe
BY NICHOLAS ABE
Former Minister of Agriculture and current chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Chief Audu Ogbe, has described former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, as very intelligent man who is imbued with mischievous spirit.
Ogbe, a former chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), in an interview with The Punch on Sunday, said Obasanjo as a former Nigerian president should show respect for the incumbent, in this case, President Muhammadu Buhari.
The three-time former minister was responding to a question on Obasanjo’s recent statement that Nigeria was adrift under President Buhari’s watch.
Said he: “Chief Obasanjo is a man for whom I have a great deal of respect, he is very intelligent but one of my biggest problems with him is his love for mischief. As a former Head of State, he should show respect for the incumbent president. Imagine if IBB, Shagari before he died, Gowon, everyone was spitting such missiles. As a tradition, former heads of state are very circumspect in their interventions or comments. You may have some observations, you may make your views known to the person by visiting him or when you are putting it out, you don’t do it in a way that denigrates and diminishes the office, position, person and authority of the incumbent.
“We are facing serious problems no doubt, some of them engineered by the problems left behind by the previous administrations and some by deliberate rascality too. He has always said things that baffle. When you reach that height, you don’t pour acid on your environment because you say things that people repeat and swallow. Nigeria is now the poverty capital of the world because somebody said so, has he been to India? We talk about poverty here, yes there is poverty. If you go to a place like India, there are families living on the pavement, that’s where they live ‘till they die. Even California where there are more millionaires than anywhere else in the world, people live in cartons on the pavement.
“The average poor man here in the village has a piece of land where he lives; that may not be rated high by the World Bank and these commentators know everything more than everyone else. When foreigners say something derogatory about Nigeria, we like repeating it; it is disappointing. The white man keeps trying to persuade you that you are the lowest of beings; that is exactly what is happening in the US now with the violence against Blacks. Do we endorse it? A Head of State has to be a bit cautious about the comments he makes; you don’t set fire to the house which you took part in building. I respect Obasanjo, a very bright man, I worked with him, he is a bit thorough in his analysis but the love of mischief is a part of him that I advise him to try and get rid of.”
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Ogbe also weighed in on zoning of political offices, especially the presidency, between the North and South, arguing that it should be maintained if only for the sake of peace and unity of the country.
He said: “My position on that is clear-zoning must be maintained. For there to be peace and stability in this country, it is too early to talk about scraping zoning. I don’t think that throwing it (zoning) away and saying power should remain in the North for a while will even solve our northern problems, it will only provoke people.
“I am telling the northerners that keeping the presidency in the north doesn’t solve your problems, it will never solve the problem. For the sake of peace, let us rotate power, it doesn’t do any harm. We are finishing our eight years, let the South present somebody to do their own eight years and let them find good material.”
On the controversial Water Resources Bill before the National Assembly, Ogbe faulted the idea of the Federal Government wanting to take absolute control of the nation’s rivers. He advised Nigerians not to keep quiet but air their views before the National Assembly.
“Let people go to the National Assembly and air their views because if a river passes through my place and you take absolute control and say I can’t do a canal and take water to irrigate my land, then I need to talk.
“Take River Benue for instance, it runs through a canal here and there. Take water inland and irrigate 5,000 hectares of land and do two crops each year, what harm does that do to the Federal Government? The river is not going to dry up because we are taking some water, we have Niger and many rivers across the country. The riverine space in Nigeria is almost 400,000 square metres, when the bill comes, people should go there and make their views known,” he said.