Obasanjo condemns Tinubu’s ‘grab power at all costs’ politics

Our reporter/ Elder statesman and former President Olusegun Obasanjo has condemned president Tinubu’s grab power at all costs mentality.

Obasanjo made the condemnation at a colloquium in Abuja on Monday to mark the 60th birthday of PDP stalwart and former Imo state governor, Emeka Ihedioha.

“Today, we have democracy, which is the government of a small number of people, by a small number of people over a large number of people, who are deprived of what they need to have in life,” Obasanjo declared.

“That is not democracy that will endure,” stated Mr Obasanjo as he trashed the reign of democracy under the All Progressives Congress, specifically aiming his blows at President Bola Tinubu’s “corrupt” mode of democratic rule.

Referencing Tinubu’s infamous power grab principle, Obasanjo, said, “It is, I am because I can grab. What sort of democracy brings you and you grab everything and then illegally, corruptly and you say, go to court? When you know that even in the court, you cannot get justice.”

Tinubu, then-presidential candidate of the APC, had in 2022 given a charge to some top party operatives in London, stating, “Political power is not going to be served in a restaurant. They don’t serve it a la carte. At all costs, fight for it, grab it and run with it.”

“It’s not that democracy is failing, democracy is dying and if we are going to make democracy not to die, we have to look at democracy in the context and in the contentof Africa. I hope that we will get to that stage so that democracy, which will deliver, will be the democracy that we will have in Africa,” Obasanjo added.

The elder statesman further stated that democracy is meant to be a system of government “that delivers and delivers to all the people, not just a section of the people, not just a few.”

“But what do we have today?

“I believe since we’ve gone past the Greek democracy, which brought everybody to the square and everybody has a say in the decision making, which affected everybody, democracy has now become representative democracy and representative democracy has not taken care of everybody,” Obasanjo noted.