Arinze Igboeli, an All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, has reacted to a recent declaration by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Obasanjo asserted that only the late Sunday Mbang, a former Prelate of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, would be the sole Christian leader to make it to heaven in Nigeria.
The former president was speaking at the funeral ceremony of the Akwa Ibom-born cleric, where he praised the Prelate’s forthrightness and lack of emotional bias.
Reacting to the comment, Igboeli, who is the national coordinator of the Igbo Mandate Movement, noted that:
”The same Mbang that Obasanjo seeks to praise to the highest of heavens was somewhat Obasanjo’s Man Friday in his eight years as the nation’s helmsman, notably after his second term elections, which were fraught with all sorts of electoral malpractices and shades of violence.
”The likes of Mbang dispelled any idea that the 2003 elections were superbly rigged!
”I recall calling out the late Prelate for his remarks on such a shambolic election in an article in the Vanguard Newspapers, then accusing him of sounding more like the PDP’s Campaign Director than the spiritual leader of one of the oldest churches in Nigeria.”
He added that Late Mbang was mute on the 2003 elections, the torching of government buildings, the Plateau State House of Assembly’s controversial quorum, and Obasanjo’s third-term agenda.
According to him, individuals like the late Ibadan strongman Lamidi Adedibu, Chris Uba and Tony Anenih held sway during Obasanjo’s days even if they had no constitutional powers.
Igboeli accused the former president of trying to turn back the hands of time with his sanctimonious posturing in recent times.
The APC chieftain added that Nigerians must be tired of Obasanjo’s holier-than-thou attitude, arguing that the nation was not better off when he held sway in Abuja.
”Nigerians surely must be sick and tired of Obasanjo’s hallowed or holier disposition, which is fed into his looming megalomania, since we had a foretaste of his eight years stint as president, which cast long and dark shadows not only on the nation’s political and economic progress as a nation but also on his person,” he said.
