Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that the President
Buhari-led government is driving Nigeria towards “disaster and
instability”. Obasanjo said this in an exclusive interview with Premium Times at
his Ibogun Olaogun ancestral home in Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun
State, last month.
The former president fell apart with Buhari ahead of the 2019 general
elections and endorsed the president’s closest rival and his estranged
vice president, Atiku Abubakar.
Speaking during the interview, Obasanjo noted that although the
country has made considerable progress since the new dispensation began
in 1999, the pace at which it is currently moving shows the nation may
be inching towards disaster and instability.
“I think we have no choice but to be on the path for sustainable
development. The progress we are making may be questionable Is it fast
enough? Is it steady enough? Is it stable enough? Are we taking two
steps forward and one step back or one step side-way?You can question that, but we have no choice but to be on (the) path
for sustainable development. Any other thing will be a disaster. In
fact, the pace at which we are going now is tending more and more toward
disaster and instability and unsustainability.No Confidence in the Economy’ The former president argued that there
is no confidence in the Nigerian economy today. Rather, he said, the
gains recorded in the past have been frittered away over the years.
Speaking on what went wrong, the former president explained that
Nigeria has failed to do what is right to instill confidence in domestic
and foreign investors. The ripple effect of the nation’s indecision, he
said, manifests in the state of the economy. Nigeria slipped into
recession in 2016 after several contractions in the economy, amidst an
unstable naira and rising inflation rates. By the second quarter of
2017, the nation slipped out of recession. Although the government
claims that the nation has been put on the path of sustainable growth,
unemployment figures have also ballooned within the period.