Estimated reading time: 9 minute(s)
Faridat Ogundairo and Jelili Gbadamosi
Former Governor of Ogun State, Segun Osoba has faulted former president Olusegun Obasanjo over his call for cancellation of the presidential and national assembly elections, saying, the former president conducted election where 200 persons died .
Osoba recalled that both 2007 and 2011 election conducted as the president have been described by international observers as worse ever .
PLATFORM TIMES reports that Obasanjo who was elected Nigeria president in 2003 on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party conducted elections in 2007 and 2011.
PLATFORM TIMES recalls that Obasanjo who appointed Maurice Iwu as the chairman of the electoral body was acussed of allocating votes to his candidates which made the party to have 28 governors against other parties .
Reading the report by international observers during a television interview on Tuesday, Osoba ,who is also a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, berated Obasanjo for the recent letter of protest he issued on the ongoing collation of results of the Saturday election .
According to Osoba, Nigerians have decided to uphold the democratic change of government and will not be provoked by Obasanjo’s statements.
Osoba also criticized Obasanjo for being pugilistic and not objective, quoting a report from the UK’s Department of International Development which described the 2007 elections “the worst in Nigeria’s post independence history” saying, that 200 people died during those elections.
“All the elections he ever conducted as President has always been condemned, in fact, the last election he conducted, the unanimous decision of the international observers was that the election was stolen and over two hundred people died in that election.
“On the day of the election, 55 people died and the fact that it was the international observer, I want Nigerians to google the report of Nigerian election in 2007 (DFID) Department of International Development UK”,
“That verdict was that Nigeria elections in April 2007 were judged by most observers to fall a long way, short of the standards of credible free and fair elections and was judged to be the worst in Nigeria’s post independence in electoral history”, he said.
Osoba, therefore, challenged Obasanjo to an intellectual debate on his claims .
He said ” I will want president Obasanjo to engage me in this intellectual debate on ground that he has started”,
“As an elder, you should learn not to be pugilistic in old age”,
“That is what Yoruba people teach us. A statesman should be statesman. If you are already in the reign, why should you now want to choose to be a referee in a situation where you should have been a glorious child?”
He also expressed concern about attempts to provoke violence in Lagos, lauding the presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu for dousing tension.
He said,”, I assure Nigerians that as they have made up their minds, they will not be provoked because I’ve seen this thing as provocation to violence and I am happy that some of the attempts to provoke people in Lagos to violence is being calmed by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu himself who says that the result in Lagos is the beauty of democracy”.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s)
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