Buhari’s aide takes shot at Obasanjo, Atiku in Facebook post

A media adviser to Nigerian president has taken a broad swipe against oppositions and “adversaries” of President Muhammadu Buhari, including former president Olusegun Obasanjo.

Former vice president Atiku Abubakar, although not mentioned by name, and his supporters were included in Femi Adesina’s broadside posted on Facebook.

Obasanjo supported Buhari, then an opposition candidate, in the 2015 general elections against then-incumbent Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party.

Obasanjo was elected president of Nigeria twice as the candidate of the PDP.

He later fell out with Buhari.

In January 2018, the former president accused Buhari of being nepotistic and said the president was lacking in the requisite capacity to make Nigeria better.

Obasanjo acknowledged his complicity in making a man who he said “is weak in the knowledge and understanding of the economy” the president.

He has doubled down on those claims on a few occasions since then. A few weeks to the 2019 general elections, Obasanjo accused Buhari of planning to rig the elections. 

“From available intelligence, we have heard of how Buhari and his party are going about his own self-succession project,” Obasanjo said in an open letter.

“They have started recruiting collation officers who are already awarding results based on their projects to actualise the perpetuation agenda in which the people will not matter and the votes will not count. ”

Buhari won the election and is set to be sworn in for a second term on May 29. His main challenger Atiku Abubakar said the ruling party rigged in favour of its candidate.

He claimed that results from the Independent National Electoral Commission’s server showed that he won the election.

However, Adesina said Obasanjo’s grouse with Buhari is based on the former leader’s selfish end and claimed that the former president is bereft of the power to form a successful political coalition that could have ousted Buhari from office.

He insisted the only reason Obasanjo and others supported Abubakar, whom “he had spent the past 10 years destroying,” was because “sluice gates of free funds had been slammed shut, and they were unhappy.”

Adesina also panned Obasanjo’s claim that a plan to Islamise and make Fulani a dominant tribe in Nigeria was afoot.

“The letter writer mobilized the international community, feeding them with misinformation and disinformation,” he said. “Fulanization. Islamization, and other creepy concoctions.”