Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has described the N15.6tn Lagos-Calabar Coastal highway project as wasteful and corrupt.
This is as he slammed the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration for spending N21 billion on a new official residence for Vice President Kashim Shettima. The former President described the project as a misplaced priority and conduit designed to embezzle public funds.
Obasanjo mad this disclosure during the public presentation of his book last week.
The former President disclosed this in chapter six of his new book, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’. There he painted the portrait and characters of chief executives at both the Federal and State levels.
The book was one of the two new books unveiled to mark Obasanjo’s 88th birthday last week.
Making assessment of Tinubu’s two years in office, Obasanjo said it appears that the game of short-changing the over 230 million Nigerians would continue because.
He said, “Everything is said to be transactional and the slogan is ‘It is my turn to chop.’’’
However, notwithstanding his criticism of his boss, the Presidential spokesman to President Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga, has declined to react to Obasanjo’s criticism.
According to Obasanjo, the majority of those who have been opportune to hold leadership positions in the country are ill-prepared, satanic, self-centered and have all corruptly enriched themselves.
He stated that they are in the shades of governors, presidents, ministers, commissioners even as local government chairmen.
The former President bemoaned that the nation continues to wallow in abject poverty and condemnable underdevelopment as a result.
According to him, many clamouring to be governors or leaders the country in one form or the other are only interested in using their offices to enrich themselves and their cronies. And then leave the country worse than they met it.
Obasanjo pointed out that most office-seekers in the country would go as far as obtaining loans of billions of Naira believing that paying back from the public funds after being elected won’t be a problem.
“How do you explain the situation of a chief executive, a governor, whose business was owing the banks billions of Naira and millions of Dollars before becoming a governor. And within two years of becoming governor, without his company doing any business, he paid all that his businesses owed the banks.
“You are left to guess where the money came from. Having got away with that in the first term, he consigned to himself almost half of the State resources in the second term. He was a typical example of the goings-on at that level almost universally in the country with only a few exceptions.
“State resources are captured and appropriated to themselves with a pittance to staff and associates to close the mouths of those that could blow the whistle. Or raise alarm against them while in office and when they are out of office.’’
The former President further noted that “The ones that are criminally ridiculous are the chief executives that deceive, lie and try to cover up on the realities and truth of action and inaction on contract awards, agreements, treaties, borrowings and forward sales of national assets. Such chief executives are unfit for the job they find themselves in.
“Typical examples of waste, corruption and misplaced priority are the murky Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road on which the President had turned deaf ears to protests. And also the new Vice-President’s official residence built at a cost of N21 billion at a the time of economic hardship. To showcase the administration hitting the ground running and to show the importance of the office of the Vice-President. What small minds!”
Going forward, Obasanjo said there is a need to interrogate the Western liberal democracy being practised. He noted that there is the need to see how it could be reviewed to reflect African peculiarities.
He said, “If the West, from where the liberal democracy started should complain about it not working well for them, we should be wise enough at this stage to interrogate, carry out introspection, internal analysis and realize that Western liberal democracy is not working for us. And is not delivering, apart from the shortcomings of the operators.
“We should seek democracy within African history, culture, attributes and characteristics. One that will take necessary African factors into consideration. Until we can get a better word or description for it, let us call it Afrodemocracy.
“It is from Afrodemocracy that we will draw up an African people’s constitution for any African that chooses to go the way of Afrodemocracy. Which will avoid most, to all, the faults we have found in Western liberal democracy,” the former president suggested.