Home > Breaking news > Your Letter Inciting, Self-serving: Buhari Blasts Obasanjo

Your Letter Inciting, Self-serving: Buhari Blasts Obasanjo

President Muhammadu Buhari-led government has warned former President Olusegun Obasanjo not to truncate the 2023 General Elections with his inciting, self-serving, and provocative letter on the elections.

In a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said what the former President cunningly framed as an ‘appeal for caution and rectification’ is nothing but a calculated attempt to undermine the electoral process and a willful incitement to violence.

The Minister expressed shock and disbelief that a former President could throw around unverified claims and amplify wild allegations picked up from the street against the electoral process.

”Though masquerading as an unbiased and concerned elder statesman, former President Obasanjo is, in reality, a known partisan who is bent on thwarting, by subterfuge, the choice of millions of Nigerian voters,” he said.

Alhaji Mohammed recalled that the former President, in his time, organized perhaps the worst election since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999, hence he is the least qualified to advise a President whose determined effort to leave a legacy of free, fair, credible and transparent election is well acknowledged within and outside Nigeria.

” As the whole nation waits with bated breath for the result of last Saturday’s national elections, amid unnecessary tension created by professional complainants and political jesters, what is expected from a self-respecting elder statesman are words and actions that douse tension and serve as a soothing balm.

” Instead, former President Obasanjo used his unsolicited letter to insinuate, or perhaps wish for, an inconclusive election and a descent into anarchy; used his time to cast aspersion on electoral officials who are unable to defend themselves, while surreptitiously seeking to dress his personal choice in the garb of the people’s choice. This is duplicitous,” he said.

The Minister reminded the former President that organizing elections in Nigeria is not a mean feat, considering that the voter population of 93,469,008 in the country is 16,742,916 more than the total number of registered voters, at 76,726,092, in 14 West African nations put together.

”With the deployment of over 1,265,227 electoral officials, the infusion of technology to enhance the electoral process, and the logistical nightmare of sending election materials across our vast country, INEC seems to be availing itself creditably, going by the preliminary reports of the ECOWAS Electoral Observation Mission and the Commonwealth Observer Group, among other groups that observed the election.

”Therefore, those arrogating to themselves the power to cancel an election and unilaterally fix a date for a new one, ostensibly to ameliorate perceived electoral infractions, should please exercise restraint and allow the official electoral body to conclude its duty by announcing the results of the 2023 national elections.

”After that, anyone who is aggrieved must follow the stipulated legal process put in place to adjudicate electoral disputes, instead of threatening fire and conjuring apocalypse,” he said.

About Editor

Otunba Sayo Akintola is a 1992 graduate of Linguistics from the University of Ibadan, Oyo State. He holds a post-graduate diploma in Financial Management and MBA from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi. He started his 12-year sojourn in journalism at the Nigerian Tribune in 1993 as Business and Economy reporter. He rose through the ranks to become the Group Business Editor of the nation’s oldest surviving private national newspaper, the Nigerian Tribune. He set up World Street Journal magazine in 2018.

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