Former Minister of Petroleum and elder statesman, Alhaji Shettima Ali Monguno has hit out at former President Olusegun Obasanjo for instigating President Goodluck Jonathan to use military might to handle the security challenge in the country.
The former minister who spoke to journalists in Maiduguri also said, Chief Obasanjo has no moral justification for passing most of the comments he has become notorious for.
He emphatically stressed that, “I do not agree with our former President that the President should use force, use the military to crush what they always call the Boko Haram”.
In his words, “Somebody who wanted to extend beyond the constitutional term, tried his very best to extend but was rejected is now advising government to do the wrong thing”.
In his opinion, “the President could come out and still employ the same tactics, which he and the late president employed to have persuaded the militant. He could have employed the same methods to the Boko Haram of the north. The northerners were expectant that he was going to use that”.
Alhaji Monguno said that even the United Nation does not believe in using force in situations and advise former President Olusegun Obasanjo to look back at his military and political way of life. On the issue of the agreed step he said dialogue is the way out. The one-time Petroleum minister called on government to realize that every child born belongs to Nigeria and attention should be given to all to improve standard of living.
The elder statesman said though he does not believe what he sees, hears or reads in the media, describing the President as weak does not even arise. He said even in military language, soldiers will not want to go to war unless it was absolutely necessary”.
It could be recalled that, Obasanjo accused the administration and that of his successor, the late President Umar Musa Yar’Adua, of being soft on corruption.
The former President spoke in Warri as the moderator of a public lecture by former External Affairs Minister Prof Bolaji Akinyemi in honour of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) President Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, who is marking his 40th anniversary as a pastor.
He said: “My fear is that when you have a sore and you don’t attend to it early enough, it festers and becomes very bad. Don’t leave a problem that can be bad unattended.”
Reflecting on the crisis at Odi, Obasanjo said:
“I attended to a problem that I saw; I sent soldiers. They were killed, 19 of them (were) decapitated. If I had allowed that to continue, I would not have the authority to send security anywhere again. I attended to it.
“If you say you do not want a strong leader, who can have all the characteristics of a leader, including the fear of God, then, you have a weak leader and the rest of the problem is yours,” he added.
Obasanjo used the occasion to announce that, “We can never get all Nigerians to a room and say let’s have a conference; we will still get representatives and when you finish, there will still be those who will not be satisfied. I may not be satisfied, and if I am not satisfied, should I not be able to vent my feeling and say I am not satisfied? If I can vent my feelings and say I am not satisfied, then I am now satisfied.”
But Obasanjo said: “There is nothing intrinsically wrong in federal character, if we have decided that we really want to weave this country together.
“The problem is how it is applied because if you are looking for Federal character with merit, you will get it anywhere in Nigeria.”