Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that President Muhamadu Buhari has done the best he could do and expecting him to do anything more is akin to beating a dead horse.
According to Daily Trust, Obasanjo spoke in Abuja Monday at a retreat on inclusive security organised by the Global Peace Foundation and Vision Africa.
He said, “The truth is this: President Buhari has done his best. That is what he can do. If we are expecting anything more than what he has done or what he is doing, that means we’re whipping a dead horse and there is no need.
“Then, where do we go from here? We cannot fold our hands. I believe that is part of what we’re doing here and what we continue to be doing. How do we prepare for post-Buhari? Buhari has done his best. My prayer is that God will spare his life to see his term through.
“But what should we do to make post-Buhari better than what we have now? That is our responsibility now, because it concerns all of us.”
Obasanjo also said that military action alone would not effectively end the insurgency in the country.
He said the stick-and-carrot approach should be used to tackle the security challenges.
“People talk of political will, but I talk of political action. Political will is not enough. It must be matched by political action. The problem of insurgency will not go away, if all we are using is the ‘stick’ (military action). We may suppress it, and keep it down a bit, but we have to use ‘carrot and stick’ together to effectively tackle the problems,” Obasanjo said.
The former leader also advocated state policing, saying “Security in Nigeria is local, it must be addressed locally. Legislation should be able to tackle that before the next election.”
Also speaking, the Sultan of Sokoto and President of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, urged leaders to stop politicising security.
“Parties are accusing one another of not doing enough to tackle insecurity. I think that’s the major problem we’ve been facing in the country…We believe we have a problem and the solution is close…Peace is very important. Without peace, you can’t even worship God. We find people killings themselves. We must go back to the holy books and work according to those books for lasting peace,” he said.
Also, the President, Christian Association of Nigeria, Samson Ayokunle, urged the elite to sustain pressure on the politicians to ensure that the successes recorded in the country’s effort to fight insecurity were not botched.
Ayokunle, represented by the Deputy President of Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, Archbishop John Praise, said: “There has to be justice and fairness, if peace is going to reign in the country.”
For the spokesman of the Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF), Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed,
The citizens must consider merit and competence in choosing their leaders for Nigeria to make progress.
He said, “We don’t have a problem with each other. We have a problem with the leadership we have in the country. We’re not talking to that leadership, and exactly to the degree that we continue to fight and blame each other. This is the key problem facing the nation.”
An elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, said, “We can sit here all day and talk to each other, but if we leave without following up our decisions with actions, we’ve wasted our time. Unfortunately, that’s what is happening in the country today.”