President Bola Tinubu’s special adviser on public communication and orientation, Sunday Dare, has fired back at Olusegun Obasanjo, calling the former president a mischief-maker who ran the most corrupt presidency in Nigeria’s history.

In a statement on Monday, the presidential aide reacted to Mr Obasanjo’s criticisms of Mr Tinubu’s government at the annual Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum in U.S. Yale University.

“Former President Obasanjo is a man with a tremendous capacity for mischief, and Nigerians know it. His journey along the path of hallucinations has never been in doubt. So is his descent into muddling facts, forgetting that he ran a presidency on record as the most corrupt. His recent diatribe at Yale University lacks sincerity,” Mr Dare said.

He added, “It is actually laughable that Obasanjo’s pretentiousness about fighting corruption is not cutting any ice in the eyes of the general public. We all know what happened under his watch and how, up till the present moment, there has been no explanation as to how he wasted a whopping $16 billion in generating megawatts of darkness across the nation. But that is not even the issue.”

Mr Dare recounted Mr Obasanjo’s push for a third term in office, adding that Mr Tinubu and others who succeeded the former president have been working hard to “clean the mess” he created while in office between 1999 and 2007.

“Democracy suffered mortal wounds under his watch, only capped by his murderous rage for an ill-fated third term. Successive administrations struggled to clean up the mess Obasanjo left behind, which President Tinubu is now making progress with. Obasanjo has lost any moral right to condemn any government. He should apologise to Nigerians for not laying the foundational infrastructure Nigeria needed to advance,” the presidential aide said.

Speaking at the annual Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum in U.S. Yale University in commemoration of the prolific Nigerian writer, Mr Obasanjo advocated for short tenures for INEC chiefs, advising that other high-ranking electoral officers be thoroughly screened and found not to have ties to any political party or candidate before being allowed into office.

“Nigeria must ensure the appointment of new credible INEC leadership at the federal, state, local government, and municipal – city, town, and village – levels, with short tenures to prevent undesirable political influence and corruption, and to re-establish trust in the electoral system by its citizens,” the former Nigerian leader said.