January 02, (THEWILL) – A Pro-Tinubu/Shettima Ticket Support Group, Patriots Roundtable, has called on former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, not to play God as regards the 2023 presidential election.
It could be recalled that last Sunday, Obasanjo, in an open letter to Nigerians, urged them to vote for the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, in the February 25, 2023, presidential election.
But the Patriots Roundtable in the tenth series of its newsletter, issued Monday, a copy of which was made available to THEWILL, titled: “Playing God” and signed by its National Coordinator, Prince Uthman Shodipe-Dosunmu, reminded the former president that like an icon, he should not play God.
It said Obasanjo “surely has a right to a presidential choice and preference.
“There are better ways. Icons do not thrash in the mud, nor do they play God, lest they risk the diminution and the ultimate censure of Robert Frost’s Hired Man: the fate of having “nothing to look backwards to with pride and nothing to look forward to with hope.“
The Group further said that “in the cyclical human journey, in the twists and turns of hope, in the dashes of despair and in the rising and fall of our ambitions, only a very few are privileged to reach a height where they are perched in the pantheon of genuine statesmanship concreteness.
“Here they must now stand above the fray of partisan coveting, the crude schemings of alliance or the overt flourishing in narrow political identification.
“Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the eventual pacifier of the murderous fields of shattered Biafra after Benjamin Adekunle had triggered the twilight, flung to martial leadership by the hands of fortune, unjustly imprisoned, resurrected again in a democratic presidency in two tenures- he has become an iconic avatar of the national emblem and greater possibilities. He should stay there.
“But Balogun of Owu is often restless, hurried by impatience, spurred by a flawed sense of omniscience, woven in the hubris of the gods, ploughing into every fray without temperance.
“He has done it again. His flawed, biased partisan intervention in the choice of the Nigerian presidency betrays a puzzling insistence on self-perpetual relevance. Icons must always hover above the fray in eclipsed neutrality, never stampeding into the conflict in a loud, rambunctious noisome intrusion of an un-instructed neophyte.
“Let lesser mortals rush into the huddle with combative ardour, slinging the darts and arrows in feverish pugilism. Not Obasanjo.”
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.
