Former President Olusegun Obasanjo exploded again yesterday, saying the Independent National Electoral Commission’s rescheduling of the 2015 elections was a desperate bid by President Goodluck Jonathan to cling to power.
The ex-president, who spoke with reporters at his Hilltop mansion in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, also accused Jonathan of planning to create chaos in the country in case his secret plot fails. Obasanjo, who faulted the rescheduling of the elections from February 14 and 28 to March 28 and April 11, described it as a bad precedent for democracy in Nigeria. However, the Presidency and the Peoples Democratic Party’s Director of Media and Publicity, PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, Chief Femi Fani- Kayode, described Obasanjo’s outburst as uncharitable, baseless and absurd.
The ex-president accused Jonathan of trying to re-enact the political crisis created in Cote d’Ivoire by its former President, Laurent Gbagbo. “We must all feel concerned before democracy is killed. The observable and what would appear to be happening is that the President has a grand plan, a grand plan to ensure that by hook or by crook, he wins the election. Or if it all fails, they scuttle it and create chaos, confusion and unpleasantness in the whole country,” Obasanjo said.
According to him, Gbagbo kept shifting the election date in his country until he lost at the poll and refused to hand over to opposition leader, Alhassan Ouattara, thus pushing Cote d’Ivoire into a crisis. Obasanjo rejected the excuse that Nigeria’s elections were shifted from February 14 and 28 to March 28 and April 11 because of the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East, saying countries with full scale wars still conducted elections. The former president, who stated that he was out of the country when INEC announced the polls postponement, alleged that the commission’s chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, was coerced to do so for obvious reasons.
“While I was out, I refused to make any categorical statement on this issue because I wanted to come back home and learn at first hand what actually transpired and what was going on. It turned out to be a forced decision on INEC because it was alleged that the security chiefs were unable to provide security and as a result, the chairman of INEC had to postpone, in accordance with the dictates of the so-called security chiefs.
“I thought, for me, that that was a bad precedent for democracy in Nigeria. It meant it doesn’t matter what preparation or lack of preparation any electoral body could make in Nigeria; the final decision whether an election will take place on the day scheduled for it lies in the domains of the security. It was a sad day for democracy in Nigeria. “And I will say this: we must all feel concerned before democracy is killed. The observable and what would appear to be happening is that the President has a grand plan, a grand plan to ensure that by hook or by crook, he wins the election or if it all fails, they scuttle it and create chaos, confusion and unpleasantness in the whole country.
“Because it is the duty and function and responsibility of the security officers to provide security, the President is the Chief Security Officer of the country and he is the Commander-in-Chief and if security is required anywhere anytime, it is his duty to provide it. Failure to provide it is dereliction of duty; pure and simple. “Either the President following his own grand plan or his aides and associates are working a script, they are playing a script which must not get his endorsement if not initiated by him.
What again it looks to me is that the President is trying to play Gbagbo. “Gbagbo was the former President of Cote d’Ivoire and Gbagbo made sure he postponed the election in his country until he was sure he would win and then allowed the election to take place. He got an inconclusive election in the first ballot and I believe this is the sort of thing Nigeria may fall into if I am right in what I observed as the grand plan. “And then in the run-off, Gbagbo lost with eight per cent behind Ouattara and then refused to hand over.
All reasonable persuasion and pleadings were rebuffed by him and he unleashed horror in that country until nemesis caught up with him. I believe that we may be seeing the repeat of Gbagbo or what I called Gbagbo saga here in Nigeria. I hope not!” he declared.
Obasanjo added that Jonathan was scared of handing over to his main challenger and All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, in the event of the APC candidate’s victory.
He said this was because the President was scared of what his successor might do to him and others if he loses the election. He said further that the President ought to have fired the service chiefs, who reportedly failed to guarantee security for the elections. He said, “It was even made worse when the President in the media chat on the 11th of this month claimed not to have knowledge or not to have authorised it. I get worried, very worried that if the President of Nigeria is not in-charge of security, maintenance of law and order and such a decision can be taken behind him.
“Assuming that is true, then the President must be railing and not ruling and then who are the shadow figures that are ruling us? It means that one day we will find out this country would be plunged into chaos, into commotion, into confusion and the President would say, ‘I do not know about it.’ Of course, President can run but he cannot run past God,” he stated. While pointing out that the security chiefs had over-exposed their lapses to the international community, Obasanjo argued that it would be impossible for them to end the Boko Haram siege in six weeks.
Insisting that the Boko Haram insurgency was not an excuse to postpone elections, the ex-president said countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia had held elections in spite of ongoing wars. “Boko Haram problem, as they are now, has been with us since 2009. So, to say that what we have not been able to achieve in five years, we will achieve in six weeks? Let us wait and see, that would be my own thing but when people want to make excuses, they should look for excuses that are tenable,” he added.
The former president urged Jonathan not to truncate the nation’s democracy, adding that “democracy is not the final destination but a process.” He also enjoined the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and opposition APC to tread softly in the interest of the country, saying both parties have the responsibility of seeing to the continuation of democratic process in Nigeria.
But in a statement by the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, Dr. Reuben Abati, the Presidency accused Obasanjo of plotting with unnamed interests within and outside the country to thwart the elections and foist an unconstitutional Interim National Government. Abati said Obasanjo was hoping to head the said ING, but “by the Grace of God Almighty, his odious plan to return to power through the back door will fail woefully.”
He added, “We know very well that it is in pursuit of this nefarious plot that the former President continues to sow the seeds of discord and crises in the polity by purporting to remain in the ruling party while openly consorting with the opposition, endorsing its candidates and predicting victory for opposition candidates in a manner most unbecoming of a supposed elder statesman.
“The President stands by his commitment, which he reaffirmed on national television last Wednesday that on his watch, all elections in Nigeria, will be free, fair and credible, and that all certified election results will be respected.”
In a separate statement, Fani-Kayode said, “It is simply not true that President Goodluck Jonathan wishes to remain in power at all costs and the suggestion that he has a hidden agenda or that he somehow imposed his will on INEC by getting them to postpone the elections is baseless and absurd. “It is most uncharitable and unfair for him to suggest that President Jonathan wishes to remain in power by hook or by crook because that is not the nature of Jonathan. It is even worse for him to compare him to President Laurent Gbagbo.
“To Jonathan politics is not a matter of do or die and President Obasanjo knows this more than anyone else. We will respond to President Obasanjo in full at the appropriate time but the truth is that we will not allow him or anyone else to distract us from the task that lies ahead.”
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