Allow Obj, IBB spill the beans – Mbadinuju

Posted by admin Latest Politics Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

Former Anambra State governor, Dr. Chinwoke Mbadinuju has cautioned those appealing to the former military and civilian presidents, General Ibrahim Babangida and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who are locked in verbal war, to refrain from restraining them.

The former governor submitted that the verbal exchange between the former leaders had not only been entertainning but revealing. Mbadinuju, in a statement in Abuja yesterday, advised those involved in trouble-shooting efforts including President Goodluck Jonathan not to intervene as their diatribe had been quite illuminating on certain developments in the country’s past.
“The Obasanjo/Babangida hot exchanges, I feel, were very entertaining and something good for Nigeria.

I wouldn’t have advised Mr. President to try to stop them. It has been long since the two Generals have been sizing up each other in a way of cold war, of no war and no peace. So it is good that there is this opportunity for them to talk to themselves and to the people of Nigeria. We have been thoroughly educated as each General outlined his achievements in office as in the case of the period when Babangida was the head of state, or the periods when Obasanjo was either the military head of state or the civilian president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“We were told of how IBB and former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar and General Gusau, former national security adviser, how three of them worked and plotted the freedom of Obasanjo who was jailed for life. They didn’t stop at helping to free him they also plotted to make him Nigeria’s president. We were told there was a “gentleman’s agreement” whereby after Obasanjo’s four years as president would step down for former head of state, Babangida.

“Obasanjo, according to Babangida, breached the accord twice in 2003 and 2004. This is the background of IBB’s grouse against his friend and colleague General. With this the public may still be waiting to hear from Obasanjo his reasons for deciding to renege in his agreement with IBB and for fighting his benefactor for these number of years.

“As for developmental strides while in office and from what we hear them say Obj must have scored ‘A’ and IBB ‘A’, with plus for his new state creations, which solved many political problems in Nigeria. In any case, what has a beginning must have an end, so I expect that with the present trouble-shooting of Mr. President it shall be well with the two Generals and with us the spectators.”
Also speaking on the contentious sovereign national wealth which has pitched the state governors against the Presidency, the former governor appealed to the incumbent governors to see reasons with President Jonathan as he noted that the initiative was meant to save for the rainy day.

“On the issue of the national sovereign wealth, I must say that majority of our people do not know what it means. It sounds like an insurance, to save money for future. It is important that we save for our children to benefit from after many have gone. It is like a man and his wife when the children were complaining of hunger. The man told his wife to go to the barn and bring all the yams, cook them all the same day so that the children can eat and be full, at least, for that day. But the wife countered and told the man it was better to go slowly and cook few yam tubers and save the rest for another day. If the children are well fed in one day but nothing else for the other days it would be like penny wise pound foolish.
“So, let us all support the president’s new initiative which is part of his transformation agenda.”
I believe it will work”.

-Sunwp_posts