Obasanjo Worst Thing To Have Happened To Nigeria – Owie

A founding member of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and a former member of the highest legislative body in the country, Senator Rowland Owie has accused former president Olusegun Obasanjo of being the master-mind behind the destruction of the dream of the founding fathers of the party and what the party stood for.
According to him, Obasanjo “is the worst thing that has happened to the country”.
Senator Owie said that he was ready to challenge Obasanjo to a public debate on any news medium locally or internationally, “and I will prove that he is the worst thing that has happened to this country”. Senator Owie who represented Edo South senatorial district during his time in the senate said that former president Obasanjo had scant regard for the party ethos, just as he willfully circumvented the party’s constitution to achieve his personal goals.
Owie who spoke to LEADERSHIP SUNDAY exclusively, said that the former president lacks the moral high ground to attack President Goodluck Jonathan, as according to him, President Jonathan in his two years in the saddle has achieved more than what Obasanjo did in eight years.
There appears to be no love-lust between President Jonathan and the former president, believed to be his benefactor. The matter came to the fore with Obasanjo declaring that power must return to the geo-political North in 2015. The implication being that he would not support President Jonathan’s second term.
It is widely believed that Obasanjo is propping up the governor of Jigawa state, Alhaji Sule Lamido to vie for the party’s presidential ticket. Obasanjo who stepped down as the chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees (BOT) unceremoniously, is also believed to be fronting another candidate as a replacement for the office. This, it was learnt, has pitched him and his group against President Jonathan.
Only recently, Obasanjo told the national chairman of PDP, Dr. Bamanga Tukur, who had reached out to him in his Ota Farm, that he would not stop criticizing the party. But speaking with LEADERSHIP SUNDAY yesterday, Senator Owie said that Obasanjo superintended the desecration of the party.
His words; “It is shocking and amazing that Obasanjo can now talk about being passionate about PDP. Obasanjo was in jail when well meaning Nigerians like late Chief Sunday Awoniyi, the late Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, Chief Solomon Lar, Malam Adamu Ciroma, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Atiku Abubakar led many of us to the PDP.
“The vision of the founding fathers was destroyed by Obasanjo. The party guidelines for choosing candidates for the 1999 elections were very clear. To qualify to contest for the office of president then, the candidate must win his state, his senatorial district etc,.”
He recalled that the former president lost both his polling booth and Ward to the then Alliance for Democracy (AD), which he said, ought to have disqualified Obasanjo from the contest but for the timely intervention of eminent citizens such as former military heads of state, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalam Abubakar, Generals T.Y. Danjuma and Aliyu Mohammed Gusau.
Owie also alleged that the former president induced members of the National Assembly   to ‘install stoogies as heads of both arms of the NASS’.

Furthermore, the former federal lawmaker accused the former president of ‘blattantly rigged the national chairmanship election between the late Chief Awoniyi and Chief Bernabas Gemade, which Germade eventually won. When he couldn’t stand the guts of Gemade, he removed him and imposed Colonel Ahmadu Ali (rtd)’.