President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to teach ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo “and his co-travellers” a political lesson they will never forget.
In a statement which Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, issued on his behalf, Buhari accused the former president of being hostile to leaders he has no control over.
He described him as someone who lacks the moral standing to criticise his administration. The statement was issued in response to the latest criticism of Obasanjo.
The elder statesman had alleged that Buhari was taking the country down the path of Sani Abacha, former military dictator.
Denying the allegation, Shehu said Obasanjo needed to visit his doctor for treatment.
“The sixteen-page letter the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, wrote to President Muhammadu Buhari and released this afternoon is the last push by desperate politicians who can’t handle the President politically and have resorted to subterfuge,” the statement read.
“Our first message to the former President is that he needs a good doctor for good treatment and to say to him, ‘Get well soon’.”
“As repeatedly said of him, since Chief Obasanjo left office in 1979, he never let every succeeding leader of the country function freely, and this included the one he personally handpicked against all known rules drawn up by the party that put him in the office of the President. But Chief Obasanjo is jealous because President Buhari has more esteem than him and the sooner he learns to respect him the better.
“It is a notorious fact that in dealing with any leader that he failed to control, he resorted to these puerile attacks. As the grand patron, more correctly the grandfather of corruption as described by the National Assembly, Chief Obasanjo released today’s letter purely for the reason of rescuing his thriving corruption establishment.
The elections starting in February will be free and fair as promised the nation and the international community by President Buhari.
“What Chief Obasanjo and his co-travelers in the PDP should expect is that from the outcome, we will teach them a political lesson that they will never forget. This margin will be much bigger than we had in 2015.”
He also denied the allegations of Obasanjo that the Buhari administration had started recruiting the officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) who would be used to rig the exercise.
“Claims that President Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have embarked on the president’s “self- succession project, by recruiting collation officers who are already awarding results based on their projects to actualise the perpetuation agenda, in which the people will not matter and the votes will not count” is not only utterly false, but a copious note from the book on the failed third term agenda of President Obasanjo,” the statement read.