‘I’m worried over insecurity’ — Obasanjo writes another letter to Buhari

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has written yet another letter to President Muhammadu Buhari.

This comes more than a year after the letter he wrote to the president generated so much uproar. He had criticised Buhari, asking him not to seek another term.

In the new letter dated July 15, Obasanjo said he is very worried over the high level of insecurity in the country.

He called on the president to take decisive action to prevent the situation from escalating into a full-blown crisis.

“I am very much worried and afraid that we are on the precipice and dangerously reaching a tipping point where it may no longer be possible to hold danger at bay. Without being immodest, as a Nigerian who still bears the scar of the Nigerian civil war on my body and with a son who bears the scar of fighting Boko Haram on his body, you can understand, I hope, why I am so concerned,” he wrote.

“When people are desperate and feel that they cannot have confidence in the ability of government to provide security for their lives and properties, they will take recourse to anything and everything that can guarantee their security individually and collectively.

“To be explicit and without equivocation, Mr. President and General, I am deeply worried about four avoidable calamities: abandoning  Nigeria  into the hands of criminals who are  all being suspected, rightly or wrongly, as  Fulanis and terrorists of Boko Haram  type.

“Spontaneous  or planned reprisal attacks against Fulanis which  may inadvertently or advertently mushroom into  pogrom or Rwanda-type genocide that we did not believe could happen and yet it happened. Similar attacks against any other tribe or ethnic group anywhere in the country initiated  by rumours, fears, intimidation and revenge capable of leading to pogrom; Violent uprising  beginning  from one section  of the country  and spreading  quickly  to other areas  and leading to dismemberment  of the  country.”