During an interview on Channels Television’s Political Paradigm from 50:00, Segun Sowunmi, a chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), delivered scathing remarks about former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s recurring criticisms of Nigerian leaders through open letters. Sowunmi questioned Obasanjo’s moral authority to critique successive administrations, suggesting that some of Nigeria’s democratic challenges originated during his presidency.
The former President of Nigeria recently stated in an interview that the fight against corruption can only succeed if it begins with accountability among top government officials in the country.
Sowunmi highlighted Obasanjo’s consistent pattern of publicly calling out his successors, including Presidents Umaru Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari, and now Bola Tinubu. He argued that Obasanjo’s actions, while reflective of his democratic right to express dissent, overlook his role in shaping the political culture that has led to some of the nation’s issues.
Reflecting on Nigeria’s pre-1999 political system, Sowunmi pointed out that party structures previously held significant influence over elected officials. He claimed that Obasanjo’s presidency undermined this dynamic, centralizing power in a manner that weakened political parties and created a culture of manipulation.
“You can’t be the one that shames every President after you. You wrote a letter to Yar’Adua basically shaming him, you wrote a letter to Jonathan, calling him out. You wrote a letter to Buhari calling him out, and you’ve started now with Bola. The question then is, is it realistic to say that since this democracy started with you as President that some of the things we even see as faults in this democracy are the habits they learnt from you?
“Before we had 1999, it was inconceivable for a political party to suddenly be smaller than the government it birthed. The 1999 experience we had with Shagari—it was not unusual for the Party Chairmen to be bigger than their Governors and to be bigger than the President, symbolically. The parties did not become so weak that one clown will be manipulating them from behind and everybody will just be rolling over, unable to speak. That kind of nonsense crept into our democracy because Olusegun Obasanjo, the man who’s writing all of these letters, was the one who desired to have all the Emperorship status vested in him, including the ability to remove Chairmen of the party. Obasanjo cannot repair the country with the consciousness with which he destroyed it,” Sowunmi stated.