Gbanite, a strategic security consultant, claimed that allowing the implementation of Sharia Law in some parts of the north during the Mr Obasanjo regime, led to the development of Islamic sect that are now staging insurgency against the Nigerian government.
The security expert made the allegation on Channels Television’s breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily, where he alleged that “he (Obasanjo) allowed Sharia to take effect because of an alleged unholy alliance between the then Governor of Zamfara state, because they did not want the then National Security Adviser (NSA) to have a role in government, therefore he called a political Sharia.”
The political Sharia, he claimed moved to Borno state, which is now the home ground of the Islamic sect.
He blamed the emergence of Boko Haram on what the administration of Mr Obasanjo failed to do, saying that “Boko Haram is a new phenomenon that wouldn’t have degenerated to the level we have it, if Obasanjo in his eight years in power, did what was fundamentally right in promotion of democracy.”
Insisting that he is not President Jonathan’s ‘fighting dog or attack crocodile’, Mr Gbanite decried the former President’s mannerism of going on an international media to lampoon the current Head of State.
According to him, Mr Obasanjo’s statement of stick and carrot approach on Boko Haram indicates that President Jonathan is failing in addressing the nation’s security challenges and this is not right for a former president.
He likened the former president’s attitude to former military head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari, saying that “the simplicity of the elder statesmen is rascality.”
He enjoined them to take a cue from other elder state men, who are as well bothered about the challenges bedeviling the nation but will resort to talking to the President in person.
Mr Gbanite, however called on President Jonathan to invoke the amnesty deal for the Boko Haram insurgents, as a way to quickly and peacefully quell the unrelenting insurgency.
