Abacha’s time was sweeter than now – Ex-CBN Deputy Governor, Obadiah Mailafia explains

Obadiah Mailafia, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, has strongly opined that Nigeria is more insecure under President Muhammadu Buhari than it was when General Sani Abacha was in power.

Obadiah Mailafia made the claim while appearing on a Channels Television program on Wednesday March 24.

According to him “This is totally unprecedented. This is the worst time ever in the history of Nigeria. You can’t even compare with Abacha’s time; Abacha’s time was a golden era compare with what is happening.

“Do you think Abacha would have tolerated all these? You can’t travel on these roads, killings everywhere, destructions everywhere.”

Reacting to the attack on Governor Samuel Ortom last weekend, Mailafia expressed grief over the fact that certain forces empower some people from a part of the country with weapons to terrorize citizens. He averred that the people of the Middle Belt are not afraid of those who carried out the assault on their governor.

Ortom said;

“This attempt on the life of an executive governor and incumbent of a state is an attempted attack on the entire people of the state. Those who are trying to do this wicked thing need to understand the implication of what they are trying to do.

“If the governor of a state cannot feel safe to go to his farm, how will the ordinary Benue people feel going to their farms? This is a very bad precedence.

“The circumstances in Borno are very different. Borno is a war zone, we’ve been living with these evil people for a while but what happened in Benue is totally different and diabolical. We don’t know what they are trying to do but this could affect the whole country.

“Benue people and the people of the Middle Belt will never ever accept this attempt on one of their sons. Nobody is afraid of these people but it is just that these people are given arms and allowed to move freely while the machetes that ordinary people have are being dispossessed from them, they are not even allowed to defend their homes and their families but we are glad that God saved the life of his Excellency, Governor Ortom.”

Mailafia ran for presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the 2019 presidential elections under the platform of the African Democratic Congress (ADC). He was persuaded to join politics after the famous historic “handshake” by the coalition of the Middle Belt Forum (MBF) and the South Afenifere of Yoruba land, Ohanaeze Ndigbo and PANDEF of Niger Delta.