FORMER President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has accused incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of planning to frame him up.
Mr Obasanjo made the allegation on Friday in a statement signed by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi.
Akinyemi dispatched the statements to journalists in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital.
The former president quoting his anonymous sources said his name was on the Watch List of Buhari’s administration.
Obasanjo said the security of his life cannot be guaranteed with the government’s latest move against him.
Obasanjo raising the alarm said since his State-of-the-Nation Special Statement on January 23, 2018, “the Federal Government had embarked on desperate efforts to frustrate, intimidate and blackmail him into abandoning what he termed ‘divine mandate to protect the rights of the people to better life and living’”.
The former Nigerian leader had urged the president not to seek a second term in office, citing underperformance. His advise has been waved away by Mr Buhari who has declared his intention to run in the 2019 election.
Mr Buhari recently accused Obasanjo of frittering away $16 billion on phoney electricity projects. Mr Obasanjo dismissed the claim saying the president was ignorant.
READ OBASANJO’S STATEMENT BELOW:
“Since Chief Olusegun Obasanjo declared in his State-of-the-Nation Special Statement on January 23, 2018, the desperation to frustrate, intimidate and blackmail him into abandoning his divine mandate to protect the rights of the people to better life and living continued unabated and has even taken a bizarre dimension.
“Impeccable security sources have alleged Chief Obasanjo’s name is on their Watch List and that the security of his life cannot be guaranteed.
“According to these informants, many of who are in the top echelon of the Nation’s security management and close to the corridors of power, the operatives are daily perfecting how to curtail the personal liberties of the former President and hang a crime on him.
“Ordinarily, we would not have dignified these reports with a response but for the fact that many of these informants are not known for flippant and frivolous talks. Secondly, this Government has demonstrably exhibited apathy, and in some cases, encouraged by its conduct, daily loss of lives and property in many States of the country, the office cannot be indifferent.
“We are currently in a nation where the Number Three citizen is currently being harangued and the Number Four citizen is facing similar threat within the same Government they serve. There is a groundswell of our nationals that live in fear that they could be hounded, harassed, maimed or even killed as the battle for 2019 takes this worrisome dimension.
“For Chief Obasanjo, this is a joke carried too far and being someone who do not act on unofficial information, he had cautioned all informants and adopted a wait-and-see attitude to the bestial propositions allegedly being contemplated to cow, cage and embarrass him.
“The content of the alleged beastly designs, it was learnt are two-fold for now. One, to seize his International Passport and clamp him into detention indefinitely, in order to prevent him from further expressing angst on the pervasive mediocrity in the quality of governance, economic management and in the protection of lives and property by the Government. But, since that could expose the Government to a swath of international condemnation, embarrassment and outrage, it is said that another plot being hatched is to cause the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to re-open investigation into the activities of Chief Obasanjo’s administration using false witnesses and documents. This will be a re- enactment of the Abacha era in which Chief Obasanjo was one of the principal victims.
