Elder statesman and northern
politician, Dr Junaid Mohammed, has faulted the controversial letters published
by former President Olusegun Obasanjo regarding the state of the nation.
Chief Obasanjo wrote some open
letters to the current President Muhammadu Buhari listing concerns, worries
about security situations in Nigeria.
However, Dr. Mohammed has said he
does not really think the letters were altruistic in their motives.
Dr Mohammed, who was a guest on
Channels Television’s NewsNight on Monday, insisted that Obasanjo should have
given his advise to Buhari in whispers, because of his place in the society.
The Second Republic lawmaker
said, “Fundamentally, I believe in a democracy everybody must have his say that
includes those who are perverse of majority view or those who are perverse in
minority view.
“What Obasanjo says is as
important as what somebody who is walking the land, the fields in his farm and
certainly what he says is as important as somebody who works in a factory or
works in a government office.
“Why I take issues with Obasanjo
and we have been friends for a very long time since 1976, I could go to him,
see him anytime when he was in the cabinet office, we have a number of friends
in common.
“What I find difficult is this
obsession with making public matters that ought not to be made public because
by making them public, you are in fact going into a contradiction and what you
say may in fact be counter protective.
“Secondly, even though Buhari was
his junior in the military, and they fought the civil war together even though
Buhari did not work directly under him, and it is not my headache, it is not my
business to defend Buhari and I’ve never defended him because I believe if you
are in public life, you are fair game whether you are president, whatever
public office you are holding in a democracy, and I always underline ‘in a
democracy’.
“Now if you may want letter
public, it creates whatever it was it wanted to create, you make a second one,
again it hasn’t had much of an impact, you also have seen him in between the
first and the second one and you also have seen him in between the second and
the third one. That shows that you are not giving him advice in public because
you don’t have access.
“People like me who are commoners
or like you may not be able to go in and see the president but he (Obasanjo)
can see him anytime, he can talk to him anytime, the only thing he cannot do
perhaps for security considerations might be to simply ask him to come and see
him but if it were the reverse, he could actually ask Buhari to go to Ota or
Abeokuta to go and see him.
“And if you want to advise
somebody and you are really truly sincere about it and you are not out for
cheap publicity, you do it in whispers, you go and whisper at him so and so
cannot be right, my experience is that so so is also not right but if you
decide to go the pompous way, write a big letter and quote A, B, and C, tell
how much history you know, how many geographies you know, how much connections
you have with the heads of state and heads of government it becomes
counterproductive and what you say may be very important, so you can see that
the man you are advising will not be able to benefit, the country will also not
benefit from some of these things and that is why I thought enough is enough of
this public letters.
“And if you write somebody a
public letter, by definition you are not advising him, you are making cheap
publicity for the country to organize and your own relevance either in the
scheme of things or in what happened or you are trying also to cultivate your
own place in history come what happens in the future, you may also be trying to
say, after all, I got it right everybody else got it wrong and that is
unfortunate especially when you are talking about the destiny of 200 million
people.”
Though Dr Mohammed agreed that
Obasanjo made some highly valid point in his letters to Buhari, he, however,
notes that the messenger and the manner in which the message is passed is as
important as the message itself.
He said, “In the words of late
Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, no man is entirely evil and you cannot dismiss a
man who has been a president twice, no. but the manner of conveying a message
is as important as the messenger himself and the topic which he tries to
address.
“So I will be the last person
that has known him intimately in terms of very serious discussions about the
future of this country. But the way and the manner and the style of
presentation is as important as the message itself and that is what we learn in
public life, I have no doubt in my mind that a lot of what he has been saying
is important but it is important only if it is going to be utilized for
improvement and for good of the country.
“If it’s going to be used like in
the market place, then at the end of the day, we are going to get ourselves
into unnecessary skirmishes and vulgar language and people taking positions on
primordial sentiments and not necessarily on what is ought to be rationally
advisable for the good of the country.”
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