A former national commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Lai Olurode, has criticized former President Olusegun Obasanjo for allegedly attempting to truncate Nigeria’s electoral process through the back door.
Mr Olurode, a retired sociology professor, warned that Mr Obasanjo’s letter on the results of the presidential and National Assembly elections shouldn’t be mistaken for the patriotism of an elder statesman.
He said Mr Obasanjo’s adversarial contemplation of elections cancellation was not “only preposterous but counter-productive and a grievous invitation to violence.”
Although he admitted that INEC could certainly have done better in the dispensation of its duty, he noted that the commission has also shifted grounds and improved from what it used to be known for.
He reckoned that there are legal remedies to whatever imperfections or lapses that are observed.
“In all honesty, considering Nigeria’s geographical expanse, the best we can do is to remain positive in the belief that INEC will have a better outing in the next set of elections in March,” Mr Olurode said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Moreover, election cancellation will be a setback and a reversal of our democratization efforts to which none should subscribe to.”
Mr Olurode recalled in his statement that Mr Obasanjo had supervised some of the worst anti-democracy elections in Nigeria’s electoral history. He said there was indeed nothing to be proud of in Nigeria’s 2003 elections which witnessed bare-faced, blatant large-scale rigging and even fundamentally flawed.
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He said the same thing happened in the 2007 general elections when Mr Obasanjo wanted to install his anointed candidate late Umar Yar’adua. Upon winning the election, Mr Yar’adua had publicly admitted that the electoral processes that brought him to power were largely flawed and rigged.
“It is not a patriotic call from former President Olusegun Obasanjo, probably emanating from ‘bad belle’ and personal hatred, vendetta and settling of old scores between Obasanjo and the presidential candidate of APC whose prospects of winning eventually looks brighter,” Mr Olurode said. “Even, elections in saner and more developed societies aren’t devoid of imperfections, fiasco and skirmishes.”
He advised the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to ignore the proposal of Mr Obasanjo and take it as “an excuse or invitation to stage a palace coup in self-succession or a return to full-scale military rule.”
“Nigerians must continue to stand firm for democracy with all its limitations,” he said. “There is no alternative to peaceful co-existence in a country that is so diverse as Nigeria.”
