PM NEWS
By Louis Odion
One read with bewilderment, even a sense of dark foreboding, the statement by former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, yesterday calling for the cancellation“of all elections that do not pass the credibility and transparency test” during the Saturday (February 25) presidential elections.
We have always known Chief Obasanjo to harbour anti-democratic proclivities. But never did one anticipate this effrontery, this in-your-face audacity by the General and his co-travellers to seek to re-enact the perfidious circus that eventuated in the June 12 annulment of 1993, thereby plunging the country into needless catastrophe yet again.
There is clearly no basis — whether legal or moral — to cancel an election which, on the whole, has been adjudged by the Commonwealth Observer Group as a significant improvement on all previous elections.
Nothing perhaps readily exemplifies this than the outcome of the presidential election in Lagos where the ruling party, APC, lost to Labour Party the home base of its candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu; the first in the last 24 years!
Of course, the “feat” has since been celebrated with wild jubilation in social media as proof of “transparency and credibility” of the Saturday elections. But the song of celebration echoed by Obasanjo and his cohorts seems to change only where APC won! Note, on the same day that Labour won Lagos, opposition PDP also won the following key states namely Katsina (home of President Muhammadu Buhari); Plateau (home of DG of APC Campaign, Governor Solomon Lalong who also lost his senatorial election); Nasarawa (home of APC National Chairman, Senator Adamu); Kaduna (home of Governor El Rufai, Special Adviser to APC Campaign) and Kano (home of Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, another Special Adviser to the APC Campaign whose son also lost House of Reps bid).
So, considering this overwhelming backdrop, what else could still be driving the cry of “massive rigging” and call for outright cancellation of results if not perfidy and pure treason? Just how possible is it to nurture democracy without democrats?
