Obasanjo, who is a member of the PDP, made his mind known during an interview with the Financial Times at the launch of his controversial autobiography titled, ‘My Watch’, in Nairobi, Kenya.
Obasanjo said Gen. Buhari, who was Head of State in Nigeria between Dec. 1983 and Aug. 1985, was aware of the challenges of Nigeria today and was qualified to rule the country.
He said, “The circumstances he (Buhari) will be working under if he wins the elections are different from the one he worked under before, where he represented both the executive and the legislature – he knows that. He is smart enough, educated enough and experienced enough. Why shouldn’t i give him my support?”
Obasanjo stated that he was confident that Buhari would be able to effectively tackle corruption and insecurity.
The former President said Buhari would restore the morale of the military which, he said, was necessary in the fight against terrorism. He said President Goodluck Jonathan had betrayed the armed forces by allowing corruption to undermine their operations.
He said, “It is a question of leadership – political and military. I think you need to ask Jonathan how he let the army go to this extent. Many things went wrong: recruitment went wrong; training went wrong; morale went down; motivation was not there; corruption was deeply ingrained; andwelfare was bad.”
Obasanjo further said that he was saddened by the rate at which the nation’s resources were dwindling, adding that when he left office, Nigeria had $45bn in its foreign reserve but the resources had been diminished by more than half despite the increase in oil prices.
Responding to the postponement of the elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission for security reasons and a better distribution of Permanent Voter Cards, Obasanjo stated that he hoped the Federal Government was being truthful.
He further urged Jonathan to put the interest of the nation ahead of his own ambition. He further warned that manipulating the electoral process could lead to a coup d’etat, adding that the May 29 handover date remained sacrosanct.
“I sincerely hope that the President is not going for broke and saying ‘look dammit, it’s either I have it or nobody has it’. I hope that we will not have a coup. I hope we can avoid it,” he said.
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