Governor 'enjoying' Buhari-Obasanjo feud over $16bn power projects

Ekiti state governor, Ayodele Fayose, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari and former president, Olusegun Obasanjo to continue with their public feud over the latters controversial power projects which cost $16 billion.

While speaking at the Presidential Villa on Tuesday, May 22, 2018, President Buhari raised questions over the $16 billion allegedly spent on Nigeria's power sector during Obasanjo's regime, even though he didn't mention his name.

He remarked, "One of the former Heads of State was bragging that he spent more than 15 billion USD on power in Nigeria. Where is the power?"

In response to the accusation, Obasanjo fired back later on Tuesday, saying that Buhari was ignorant on the subject for re-echoing an unsubstantiated allegation that has been proven false.

A statement signed by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, read, "For the records, Chief Obasanjo has addressed the issues of the power sector and the allegations against him on many occasions and platforms, including in his widely publicised book, My Watch in which he exhaustively stated the facts and reproduced various reports by both the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which conducted a clinical investigation into the allegations against Chief Obasanjo, and the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Review of the Recommendations in the Report of the Committee on Power on the Investigation into how the Huge Sums Of Money was Spent on Power Generation, Transmission And Distribution between June 1999 and May 2007 without Commensurate Result."

Taking to his official Twitter account (@GovAyoFayose), Fayose said he's enjoying the public feud because it's a vindication of his warning that those who backed Buhari in 2015 would later regret it.

He posted, "I'm enjoying this latest brickbats between President Buhari & Ex-President Obasanjo. They should keep exposing themselves for Nigerians to know what they have been hiding. Nigerians should remember I warned that those who brought Buhari will regret entrusting him with power."

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Governor Fayose is in the running for the primary ticket of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) to enable him contest in the 2019 presidential election.

Obasanjo's Third Force

Obasanjo dumped the PDP in the run-up to the 2015 presidential election and backed Buhari who defeated then-president, Goodluck Jonathan.

Despite his support of Buhari's candidacy, Obasanjo, who was democratic president between 1999 and 2007, has been a major critic of Buhari's administration.

He already created the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM) which has adopted the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as its political platform to install a new political class in the 2019 general elections.