Former President Obasanjo has said the Libyan revolution that ousted long-time leader Mu'ammar Ghaddafi let loose trained militants and weapons that found their ways into Nigeria, fuelling the Boko Haram insurgency.
In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation radio and television aired yesterday, Obasanjo said also that the rise of the insurgency could be linked to bad leadership.
"There is an element of that," he said when asked if bad leadership contributed in propping up the sect.
"There is an internal element, which you have mentioned--inadequate education in the North, or in fact inadequate education generally in the country, inadequate employment opportunities in the country, all that are part of what, if you like, is remote cause of Boko Haram as far as I am concerned.
"But then there are also external elements. Now, the fallout from Libya, which of course as a result what happened in Libya, those that have been trained in Libya in the time of Gaddafi from other countries who are neighbors of Libya, when Gaddafi fell they moved out. They moved out with their training, their weapons and they started to wreak havoc on the communities in which they have moved out to. And that is the situation in northern Mali," he added.
When asked if he meant there was a connection between the overthrow of Ghaddafi and the Boko Haram insurgency, the killing of the US ambassador in Libya on Tuesday and the instability in northern Mali, Obasanjo replied: "There is connection."
He said those who masterminded the fall of Ghaddafi, as well as the whole of Africa, have already started paying a price for that.
"And we know that there will be a price to pay in the way that it all went in Libya. At the end of the day all of us in Africa, and all those who masterminded the way it happened will have to pay a price, and we are now paying the price," Obasanjo said.
He said the Arab Spring was celebrated too early, as there are always consequences of violent overthrow of leaders.
"Now it was too early to shout 'uhuru' with the Arab Spring, and some of us said that. That look, what will be the final outcome of this? Let us wait and see. When you have violence and violent overthrow of regimes you do not know exactly what the final outcome will be."
'Boko Haram can't win this war'
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo said Boko Haram's stated objective of imposing Sharia law on Nigeria will never work because of the religious diversity of the population.
"Now, talking to people who know the history of Nigeria, you will know that you cannot impose any particular religion on Nigeria as a whole. These people cannot impose Shari'a in the North where most of our people are Muslims let alone in Nigeria," he said.
"Now, they should know that, and someone should make them know that. So I see a bit of naivety in that objective that they have given to themselves and it is an unattainable objective."
Obasanjo added: "If you are prepared to kill more people, if like somebody says "we will fight to the last drop of our blood", now, one does not know whose blood would be the last to drop. How many would they kill, how many of them will survive at the end of the day?
"I believe you should go with...you should carry carrot and stick, at the end of the day there would be area where carrot would work and there would be area where stick would work. And I believed the authorities are now adopting that.
"Those who are on the other side, Boko Haram, and those who believe in their cause or waiting for their cause, know that it is not the war that they can win."
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The so called Arab Spring was purely an Islamic Revolution.The region which hitherto has been a ticking time bomb,has been completely destablised. Hosni Mubarak though a practising muslim,for economic reasons imposed secularity on Epypt to lure Western tourists.That was to the chagrin of the Muslim Brothers who today have taken over from him. Dictator Ghaddafi was a sworn enemy of Muslim Fundamentalists,who today are in control in Libya.In Tunisia it is the same story. But to link Ghaddafi's fall to Boko Haram insurgency is completely nonsense.Neither would lack of adequate education nor lack of employment opportunities be assigned to the cause of Hausa/Fulani terrorism.The almajiris are neither educatable nor employable in our system created by OBJ and his fellow erstwhile military leaders. Chief Obasanjo shares the blame for Boko Haram insurgency.He was the President of Nigeria when the Hausa/Fulani muslims reared their ugly heads with their Sharia Movement.The Chief failed to nip that process of sharialization of Nigeria in the bud.Instead for cheap political expedience,the Chief was even cajoled into attending an OIC summit in Malaysia. The Boko Hara terrorists are the peons of Nigerian Sharia Movement.They have nothing whatsoever to do with the fall of Ghaddafi.The Hausa/Fulani terrorists are home grown and their sponsors are well known.Some of them are within Jonathan's cabinet and the identities are open secret.
Peace Bro - I hear you - I think Nigeria will have to split sooner or later because the Islamists will always try and impose their agenda on the rest of us which can never work. The other big problem in Nigeria is corruption and as long as those in Government and positions of power continue to greedily steal and loot everything in sight while the massess are starving and there is no basic infrastructure like Electricity, good Roads Hospitals and so on - Nigeria will continue to crumble and there will never be peace.
From Obasanjo's comment on the situations of the country you see very clear that he contributed to the bad governance.Obasanjo has ruled NIGERIA AS MILLITARY and CIVILIAN yet he can't boast of achieving any peace in Nigeria. The inadequate education and inadequete employment opportunities he mentioned as the root cause of boko Haram, how did he tackle this issues when he was still the President of the federal Republic of Nigeria?.OBASANJO have not really help NIGERIA
Let Obasanjo tell us who is behind Boko Haram!