Former president Olusegun Obasanjo has said the Bola Tinubu administration is currently competing with the late President Muhammadu Buhari's government in terms of inefficiency.

As reported by Daily Trust on Monday, August 25, Chief Obasanjo made the remark in his new book, "Nigeria: Past and Future," one of two publications he launched in March to mark his 88th birthday.

Leadership also noted Obasanjo's stance.

In the first chapter, 'From the Beginning Till Now: The Missing Key', Obasanjo reviewed Nigeria’s leaders since independence in 1960, positing that Buhari’s administration was the “worst civil administration regime” in the nation’s history. Obasanjo wrote: “Only Bola Tinubu’s administration seems to be competing with Buhari’s for now."

Furthermore, the octogenarian recalled how Buhari had once described late Shehu Shagari’s government as corrupt, self-serving, and rudderless, only to return years later as a democratically elected president without addressing the problems he had identified.

Obasanjo queried: “Words are cheap, and what needed to be done was left undone during Buhari’s civil administration from 2015 to 2023 – the worst civil administration so far in Nigeria’s history.

Maybe those ideas and thoughts were not his; he just read them as written for him. Otherwise, how do you explain the gulf between what he said then and how he governed later?”

That was the first time that Obasanjo would criticise the Buhari and Tinubu administrations.

In November 2024, the presidency responded to Obasanjo over the former president's criticism of President Tinubu’s administration, saying the former president was not an ideal leader to emulate.

It also asked the former president to reflect on the missed opportunities during his time in leadership.