Obasanjo: Another Name For Mischief
With the collation of results of the concluded presidential election currently ongoing, Nigerians have once again been assaulted with a letter from former president Olusegun Obasanjo asking President Muhammadu Buhari to postpone (read cancel) the ongoing process.
Like his previous letters with the Nigerian people that are characterized by mischief, grandstanding, meddlesomeness, and comicality and therefore largely unworthy of serious national attention this recent one would also have been inconsequential to be dignified with a response but for the dangerous slippery slope of a constitutional crisis, illegality, anarchy in which Obasanjo, as his wont, is perhaps desirous of taking our nation.
We are not entirely perturbed that in asking president Buhari to truncate a constitutionally mandated vote collation process, Obasanjo did not present any shred of evidence to back up his selfish request other than some jejune and pedestrian conjecture that the INEC officials were “compromised” and “that election process has been corrupted and most of the results that are brought outside BVAS and Server are not true reflection of the will of Nigerians who have made their individual choice” because of his notoriety as having largely observed the Nigerian constitution in the breach when he was in the saddle more so as an apostle of “do or die” election.
We wonder if Obasanjo has been watching the live collation process on television where votes are been announced to have been canceled in polling units because of over-voting due to the fact that some people cast their votes outside the purview of the BVAS machine.
We also do not understand Obasanjo’s impatience that the entire results are yet to be uploaded when the results being announced at the collation centre have been signed by registered agents of political parties, which are required by law, and would be subsequently uploaded on the INEC portal. These are the ones that would stand if, per adventure, collated results are challenged starting from the Ward level.
What beggars belief is the fact that Obasanjo still does not—-or chose not to—-see that he lacks credibility in commenting about an election in which he had publicly declared his support for Peter Oni, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party who has taken a similar position.
It’s important to remind Nigerians once again that the fifth columnists of which Obasanjo is an integral part are not letting up on manufacturing a crisis with this presidential election in order to foist an interim government on the nation if their ‘horse’ could not win the race which is now obvious to them he cannot, thereby terminating our hard fought democracy. It was after all not for nothing when Pa Ayo Adebanjo, Obasanjo’s co-traveler in this failed Obi presidential bid said we should forget about Nigeria if the former governor of Anambra state didn’t win this election.
While we expect that more members of the fifth columnists and their acolytes would still come out of the woodwork to discredit another peaceful, credible, and transparent election since 1993, Nigerians should insist that the process must be completed as stipulated by the Electoral Act. Anything less than this is uncivilized and will never augur well for our country’s democracy.
*FEMI ODERE*
_Head of Media and Publicity_
*DIASPORA DIRECTORATE*
APC, PCC.
Tuesday, February 28, 2023