The Federal Government, on Tuesday, appealed to former President Olusegun Obasanjo not to truncate the 2023 general election with “his inciting, self-serving and provocative letter on the elections.”
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement by his media aide, Segun Adeyemi, said the former President’s call that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), should prevail on the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, to stop the election result collation process and rectify the allegations raised against INEC from many quarters was nothing but a calculated attempt to undermine the electoral process.
The opposition parties — the Labour Party, and the Peoples Democratic Party, under which Obasanjo led the country from 1999 to 2007— had accused INEC of complicity in alleged malpractices during the polls.
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.
Mohammed alleged that Obasanjo, in his time, “organised 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.”
He said, ”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 aspersions 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.”
The minister noted that instead of calling for the cancellation of the election, those aggrieved by the election result should seek redress in the courts.
With a 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.
