Posted by By DIPO KEHINDE on
Barely one week after facing a storm of criticisms over attempts to elongate his tenure of office, President Olusegun Obasanjo has again found himself under fire as one of his course mates in the Army, Brigadier-General Benjamin Adekunle (retd), explained why majority of Nigerians are suffering untold agony under the present regime.
• With him, we're in trouble, he says
Barely one week after facing a storm of criticisms over attempts to elongate his tenure of office, President Olusegun Obasanjo has again found himself under fire as one of his course mates in the Army, Brigadier-General Benjamin Adekunle (retd), explained why majority of Nigerians are suffering untold agony under the present regime.
Adekunle, who got the nick name Black Scorpion during the civil war, described Obasanjo as a stooge of the North and opportunists, who cannot serve the interest of the masses.
He revealed how Obasanjo stabbed him in the back at the tail end of the civil war and the reason the President couldn't do anything about the rising cost of living.
Said he: 'We are in trouble. To pay school fees now is very difficult. To have three square meals a day is very difficult. To have a house is very difficult. Nigerians are saying they've had enough.
'People are hungry. Transportation is expensive. Kerosene is expensive. To get admitted into an hospital, some people will prefer to die, they'll allow the money they'll use in curing them to go to their children so they can have better education than going to death. They've increased the cost of everything, even the cost of death. A lot of people die because they don't have money to live."
Wondering why a country producing oil is paying more for crude oil, for kerosene, petrol and engine oil, Adekunle said, 'countries getting supplies from Nigeria don't pay one-third of what we pay locally. Maybe it's because he comes from a poor family and he wants people to suffer the way he had suffered."
He argued that Obasanjo was planted in power by the Northern establishment that has been using him against his people since the civil war.
'Our man in government is a stooge," he said, adding: 'He was planted there. Let me give you one instance. When the war was coming to an end, we had OAU to do. If I tell you we are doing OAU, you will laugh, thinking it's the Organisation of African Unity. No. It was a code of operation meaning Owerri, Aba, Umuahia (OAU). You will not understand the military implication. And you will not have the time to give it a thought.
'The operation was to capture Igboland. That's the root of the secession. Owerri, Aba, Umuahia were the backbone. After capturing them, Obasanjo came round to say he did it. I had a good laugh and I'm still laughing.
'Obasanjo came round and Hassan Usman Katsina and all of them were saying, ‘if you allow Adekunle to finish the war, then he'll become Head of State. The best thing is, let's find a way of undoing him.' So, they brought Obasanjo, my own course mate, my own Yoruba mate, saying that he captured Owerri, Aba, Umuahia. It has given him a lot of arrogance."
Full interview next week