Former Chairperson, Senate Committee on Health, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo has given the supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari her own opinion.
Iyabo, a one-time Ogun State Commissioner for Health and currently a university Professor based in Virginia, United States advised “Buharists” to listen to the words of wisdom in an exclusive interview she had with Vanguard.
The daughter of President Olusegun Obasanjo who’s been previously found to be at loggerheads publicly with her father, blasted President Buhari’s supporters for using her 2013 “Open Letter” to her father as a form of validation to the unimportance tagged to the former Nigeria’s President open letter.
The Veterinary Public Health and Preventive Medicine practitioner had written an open letter in 2013, with strongly worded statements directed at her father who wrote an open letter to President Goodluck Jonathan, at the wake of Nigerians’ lack of conviction in his government.
In a no-holds-barred statement issued to Vanguard exclusively from her Virginia, United States base, Senator Obasanjo flayed the Buhari administration for running for cover on the fundamental issues of bad governance raised in the statement issued by her father last Tuesday. Instead of drawing wisdom from the letter issued by her father, she expressed her disappointment with what she described as the “cheap tactic” of the Buhari apologists in drawing unconnected issues to run away from the “advice and admonishment of one of the most brilliant leaders to ever emerge in modern Africa.”
“The wise should listen, wherever help and advice come from. Those who republished the old letter should have spent time to respond to the content of the said statement,” Senator Obasanjo who served in the Nigerian Senate from 2007 to 2011 said. In a statement sent to Vanguard, she reasoned:
My attention has been drawn to the republishing (in social media) of a letter from 2013 that has since been overturned by events. I am surprised that agents of the current Nigerian administration who should benefit from the advice and admonishment of one of the most brilliant leaders to ever emerge in modern Africa have resorted to a cheap tactic that further reiterates the message that they found abhorrent enough to start looking for unconnected issues to put together to make their point.
“To say that Nigeria has problems is to make an understatement. The wise should listen, wherever help and advice come from. Those who republished the old letter should have spent time to respond to the content of the said statement which, among other things, called on President Buhari to join the rank of retired elder statesmen in 2019. I would think this was appropriate and even unnecessary advice, given the serious medical problems he has had over the last few years.
“I have had no connection with his administration or to the previous one after I left the Senate in 2011, and to try and use me and my name as some excuse is shameful. I agree with the contents of the open letter and like all people that wish Africa well, hope that Nigeria someday comes out of its death spiral to become a leading nation in the world.
“It is tiring to continue to be part of the Nigerian conversation when there is no positive impact to it. I really do not want to be part of it, as I have found over and over again that speech and words are wasted on people who have no understanding of the responsibility on us as black people on this planet.
