The prevailing political crisis in the country has been blamed on the former President Olusegun Obasanjo, just as his eight years in office as the president was described as such that brought a �litany of woes� on Nigeria.
The joint presidential candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Alliance for Democracy (AD), candidate in the 1999 presidential election, Chief Olu Falae, said this while speaking with Saturday Tribune in an exclusive interview over the state of the nation.
Falae, who is currently the Chairman of the Democratic Peoples Alliance (DPA), said Obasanjo could have corrected the shaky start of Nigeria�s new democracy way back in 1999, when he �controversially� emerged as the president, if he pursued democratic norms.
Rather, according to Falae, Obasanjo became a dictator and did not tolerate opposition or the point of view of other stakeholders in the country.
As a result of this, Falae said; �All what we are seeing now are the consequences of that very shaky and unrighteous foundation.� He premised this on the current epileptic state of electricity supply and other needed social amenities in the country, which are no longer available to average users.
�Now, all our motorable roads are no longer motorable and electricity supply has collapsed. What used to be about 4,000 megawatts is now reduced drastically, unemployment has increased, insecurity has worsened and more businesses have packed up.
�I can go on and on. It is a litany of woes. That is all we experienced under him (Obasanjo). �When he was about to leave office, you saw what happened. He urged his people to take power by force. He said �do or die� and also people were killed during the so-called election.�
To correct all these anomalies, Falae, the former Finance Minister under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida regime, said there was the need for the convening of the Sovereign National Conference. �We are going back to the drawing board to scrap all this nonsense. �Let�s go to the Sovereign National Conference to re-discuss the Nigerian project, to return to a true federalism, to return to regional government, to return to the parliamentary form of government,� Falae said.
He maintained that it was only the parliamentary system that would discourage too much reposing of power in one man�s hand as being witnessed at the presidency. He stated further that as the case is in a parliamentary government �If the head of government, the premier, prime minister, president or governor is a member of the legislature along with his ministers, they are all members of the legislature.
�So, the governor who is presiding over government knows that his ministers are not just nonentities that can just be pushed out, because each of them has his own followers. �You have to win an election first to establish that you are a political leader in your area before you are appointed. Such a practice would discourage corruption and non-performance of political leaders in power.
Dec292007