The Nigerian Leader, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan has described his political godfather, former president Olusegun Obasanjo, as a threat to national security.

Jonathan in his reply to Obasanjo’s hard-hitting open letter of December 2, 2013 told Obasanjo: “Your letter is clearly a threat to national security as it may deliberately or inadvertently set the stage for subversion.”

He further observed: “It appears that your letter was designed to incite Nigerians from other geopolitical zones against me and also calculated to promote ethnic disharmony. Worse still, your letter was designed to instigate members of our Party, the PDP, against me.”

The President also told Obasanjo: “Your letter conveys to me the feeling that landmines have been laid for me.”

Jonathan in his reply dated December 20th 2013 and entitled “RE: BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE”, indicated that he was too busy for a line-to-line response to Obasanjo’s 18-page letter. He therefore chose “to respond to only the most serious of the charges which question my sincerity, personal honour, and commitment to the oath which I have sworn, to always uphold and protect the interests of all Nigerians, and promote their well-being.”

Those charges include alleged failure to decisively tackle the country’s security challenges, encouragement of corruption, hobnobbing with criminals, training of a killer squad for the purpose of his presumed re-election bid in 2015, division of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and promotion of Niger Delta nationalism rather than seeing himself as the President of all Nigerians. Jonathan expectedly denied all the allegations.

He also pointed to his administration’s achievements in the areas of Foreign Direct Investment and international relations.

Though he was courteous in has reply, Jonathan never masked his anger, telling the retired army general and immediate past Chairman of the Board of Trustees of PDP: “Let me state that you have done me grave injustice with your public letter in which you wrongfully accused me of deceit, deception, dishonesty, incompetence, clannishness, divisiveness and insincerity, amongst other ills.”

News Express will shortly publish the President Jonathan’s letter in full.

•Photo shows Jonathan and Obasanjo.