Daily Sun Interview - Taiwo Obasanjo, is ex-wife of former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. In this interview, she unfolds her plan to float a political party, with the name, Abundant Blessing Congress. She says her mission is a “divine assignment from God.’’
Why are you interested in floating a political party? What exactly is your mission and why not find accommodation in existing platforms?
I have a divine assignment from God to come out with something like this. It has a divine agenda. What is the divine agenda? What is the agenda? It is to create a selfless platform for people to come together and become the custodian, part and parcel towards rebuilding this nation. We shouldn’t leave it to only the government of the day to run. It is going to be a kind of shadow government, that will also externalise itself in all that they want to do for the nation. The Abundant Blessing Congress will also be internalizing what they want to do and that’s what we are going to externalize in the nation. That’s why I said we shall have a shadow government, because right now, what we have doesn’t make me happy.
Everyone is blaming Buhari and he is actually being demonized. I believe he shouldn’t be demonized, I believe he should be appreciated because he is faced with a lot of deep challenges and you may ask, how do you now solve the problems?
Yes, we can solve the problem because he came as a caterpillar to clear the bush but he isn’t the one that will be building that foundation, I believe he can build a superior foundation on the one he has laid. And what is the foundation he has come to lay? His mission is to bring us back to a people with conscience, a people that must know that we should rule with fear of God; that is, we should be accountable and there should be disciplined and we shouldn’t institutionalize dishonesty. So, the man shouldn’t be hated.
But you have admitted that the man is faced with a lot of challenges; will it be right to say he is overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenges? Even his wife said the presidency has been hijacked by a cabal. What is our take?
You have made reference to his wife’s comment. I agree with that and that’s why I say Buhari isn’t the person to be blamed, we shouldn’t heap blame on him; there are forces beyond him which he is unaware of. Perhaps, I don’t know but they are behind the throne. I will call them sadistic power, they are always unleashig their venom.
This your observation of a sadistic power; do you align yourself with observation of former presidential spokesperson, Reuben Abati, who talked about demonic forces within the precinct of the Presidential Villa?
Yes, Buhari may not be aware, they work gradually like I told you.
Buhari from my own personal psycho-analysis and information given to me by the Almighty God, is 100 percent good. He is clean, he has what you call undiluted honesty, he has what you call undiluted integrity and he isn’t cunning, he isn’t sly. He isn’t hypocritical. But there are sadistic forces behind the throne, he isn’t even aware that they are sadistic and they are using their venom to poison the agenda given to him by God. He hasn’t come to inflict pain or hardship on the people, but right now, the change we are now experiencing in the nation is change into greater hardship, greater problem than we have ever seen before in the history of this country.
With the picture you have painted, invariably you are saying, Buhari himself needs to be delivered from sinister forces before he can deliver the nation?
No, it isn’t Buhari that has to be delivered, it is we the people that have to take it up as our responsibility. Let me give you an example. When small pox was a plague in the world, killing so many people, the cure for small pox was found in administering the same virus into the virus killing the people and that’s where the cure came for small pox—virus into virus and the plague was stopped. Just like that! So, the solution is the people now. Like I said, the emphasis, the focus, the blame, whatever it is, shouldn’t be on Buhari or Jonathan. I think the people have to come in, which is what our party now, our congregation, the people have to come right now and now begin to discuss, to actualize how we are going to solve our problems ourselves, without heaping everything on the president, because he cannot solve them all alone. The solution to Nigeria’s problem is with Nigeria.
Has your party applied to INEC for registration?
We will move toward that but we want to create the awareness first. We want to create a newer platform. I am not saying those on ground are already grounded, because I haven’t come as a judge, or a social critic and I haven’t come as a self-righteous saint to pontificate.
People might take me for a front for Daddy Obasanjo, no. I am not a voice for him, I am a voice for the Almighty God. I am a mother and when a mother sees her children, going through a lot of pains, she has to play her own part to ameliorate the suffering of her family.
So, what we are trying to do is a family affair, a family platform.
In specific terms, what is your platform trying to do differently?
We are coming together, men and women. Any candidate that wants to go into elective office, I am not coming forward for any elective office.
So, what will you be doing with your party?
My aim, my agenda, my objective is to get all of us together to fashion out a strategy of how we can recover our lost possession in this nation, our lost glory, how we can become a producing nation, instead of consuming and importing and how we can make life better.
Buhari still has two and half more years to go, because a child that is going to grow will first of all crawl before walking. We don’t want to start seeking elective office only. We want this platform to have trained the people. Everyone, I call it a family, they know our vision, our agenda and what is the agenda? Like I told you, we begin indoctrination among us, so that anyone among us seeking elective office will not get there and start thinking about what to do. In fact before, once a president from our own platform emerges, the following day he will have the names of all the ministers and the Senate can do the screening. We also want to champion one term for everybody, from 2019.
You think federal lawmakers would not resist that?
Well, I have told you that my project has divine backing. Do we need two terms? We don’t need it and we must phase it out. Whatever you want to do, if you cannot finish in four years, let someone else take it up from there. So, these are the areas and many, many more.
How many state chapters do you have now?
It is going to be all over the nation, but we are going to start small.
Will you be seeking an elective position?
No, I Taiwo Obasanjo will not be seeking an elective office but my members can. The party is hinged on three S: selfless sacrifice, selfless service and the third is selfless submission, saturated with self discipline and accountability. Selfless service is about serving people not with the motive of money. When we talk about self discipline, even if you come, it is a conservative party, but open to suggestion, open to improvement.
Finally, when you heard President Buhari in far away Germany talk about his wife belonging strictly to the home front, how did you feel?
But that’s the truth. The first thing a woman should do for her husband is to cook, that’s her role. You must also be useful in the bedroom and you must be there to take care of the home.
I don’t think he meant that the woman was talking rubbish. But that’s the natural role of any woman in her home.