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Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has come under attack for criticizing June 12 Democracy Day celebration. A statement from President Muhammadu Buhari Media Organisation signed by the chairman, Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary, Cassidy Madueke, accused Obasanjo of not seeing anything good in another leader, as he had rated late President Umar Yar’Adua and former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administrations low. Also, his eight-year administration (1999-2007) came under questioning for allegedly doing nothing on the assassination of the late Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige. BMO said that Obasanjo was just being petty and mischievous with his latest tirade against President Muhammadu Buhari on the occasion of the maiden celebration of June 12 as Democracy Day in the country. The statement claimed that he (Obasanjo) was bitter that President Buhari took measured steps to immortalise the late Moshood Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 12 1993 election. Obasanjo had claimed on the eve of June 12, 2019 that disaster was looming in Nigeria over President Buhari’s inefficiencies in power and backed his claims by shunning the Democracy Day event in Abuja.
            Reacting to Obasanjo’s scathing remarks against Buhari’s government, BMO said: “First, it was his infantile Islamization agenda claim, now Chief Obasanjo who, many Nigerians agree, was the biggest beneficiary of the democracy that Abiola paid the supreme sacrifice for, has opted for a disjointed attack on Buhari mainly to divert attention from the celebration of the man he probably hated more than the President. How else can anyone describe a situation where a former President who literally rode to the Presidency on the back of millions of Nigerians, who were relentless in demanding a return to civil rule, but could not as much as acknowledge President Buhari’s efforts to atone for the damage done to the polity with the annulment of that election? But even as Obasanjo chose the day to launch another puerile and incoherent attack on the President, Nigerians, from all indications, are united in praising Buhari for going beyond the investiture of Abiola, his then running mate, Baba Gana Kingibe and the foremost human rights crusader Gani Fawehinmi, with national honours few months ago, to renaming the Abuja National Stadium as Moshood Abiola Stadium.
            This incidentally is one act that the former President bluntly refused to do in office even after the Senate, in 2003, unanimously passed a resolution for the just constructed stadium to be named after the national icon. It is on record that he once stunned the nation by declaring that the late Abiola was not the messiah that Nigeria needed. This more than anything spoke volumes about why Obasanjo failed to grant official recognition to June 12 or honour the memory of the man who personified the day that has since 1993 been described as a watershed in Nigeria’s democracy. So it cannot be a surprise that he attempted to water down the celebration of a man he hated, by another one that he equally hates, for not allowing him to have his way.