MORE criticisms came the way of former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, over his statement on plot to rig election on Sunday, as national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu, described him as rigger without peer.
In his response to Obasanjo’s statement on Tuesday, former Lagos State governor and co-chairman of the APC Presidential Campaign Council said Obasanjo was projecting to the APC the misconduct he would perpetrate if still in power.
“Yet, the ways of Obasanjo are not those of the APC. This difference has meant the better for Nigeria,” Tinubu said in letter.
“There is no election which occurred under Obasanjo’s watch or in which he participated that did not involve cheating on his part. Even the late President Umaru Yar’Adua admitted he was the beneficiary of a flawed election engineered by none other than today’s vociferous complainant,” he said.
Tinubu, in a statement he personally signed, entitled: “Chief Obasanjo -At war against his own deeds,” said “former President Obasanjo is many things to many people; but he is all things unto himself. His recent contribution to our political discourse wherein he alleges plots to steer the coming elections shows he benefits from an exceedingly faulty memory, is purely shameless or has a most wicked sense of humour. Perhaps all three are facets of his makeup and were equally on display in his latest prosaic display.
“The crux of his long tirade was the allegation that INEC is poised to cook the election results. Chief Obasanjo should not get his dander up and waste good ink for nothing. This election will be a free and open exercise of the people’s right to choose their leaders. Obasanjo makes fiery allegations against this right but offers no corroborating evidence; he presents only reams of words. This is because Obasanjo is projecting onto the APC the misconduct he would wrought if still in power. Yet, the ways of Obasanjo are not those of the APC. This difference has meant the better for Nigeria.”
Tinubu lamented that Obasanjo, when he was elected as president in 1999, “instead of being a unifying figure as commander-in-chief, he lowered himself to being a divisive, vindictive conniver. There was no table which he neared that he did not upset and overturn. There was no one who came into his company for any period of time with whom he did not fall out if he expresses a thought contrary to one of his.
“He tried to convert our young democracy into a one party state. His Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) boasted that they would rule for 60 uninterrupted years. Never did they boast that they would govern us well during even one year of the sixty. He could have placed the economy on the path to durable growth and shared prosperity through diversification, industrialisation and creation of a social safety net for the poor.
“Instead, he handed the economy over to a tight group of cronies, turning what should be a modern economy into a version of the mammoth trading companies that dominated the 17th and 18th centuries. The Transcorp conglomerate was intended to be a throwback to monopolistic enterprises such as the East Indian Company wherein a select handful would control the national economy’s strategic heights.
“We hoped that Obasanjo would personify statesmanship, thus showing the way to a more benign political culture. Instead, he bickered and feuded with his vice president and mostly anyone who dared remind him that he was human and thus infallible.”
Tinubu further said “if Obasanjo was so committed to free elections, how could he countenance Atiku’s recent boast of single-handedly rigging elections in the South-West? Atiku claimed that he took all states for the PDP but left Lagos alone due to some misguided affinity for me. By this statement, Atiku publicly admitted to rigged elections in the South-West. Beyond resort to wholesale rigging, Atiku could never deign to be more popular and potent in the South-West than the panoply of good and decent leaders that guided the defunct AC.
“Moreover, I can assure you that we did not need Atiku’s false beneficence to win the elections in Lagos. The people voted for us and their votes countered the ill-designs Obasanjo and Atiku set in motion. Thus, if Obasanjo cannot chastise Atiku for publicly boasting that he rigged elections, then Obasanjo’s display of righteous indignation is but a magician’s trick.”
Speaking on Obasanjo’s claim of Nigeria returning to Abacha days, Tinubu said “if this were true, the press would be constantly closed. Obasanjo would be constricted in writing such letters. Elections would not be upon us. Atiku would not be able to freely campaign and the diversity of opinion in the public space would be suppressed.”
Reacting, the PDP described Tinubu’s statement as “disrespectful, reckless, unguarded and indecorous.”
In a statement made available to newsmen by its national publicity secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, the party said “Tinubu in his tirade against the former president sounded like a disrobed ruler facing a pang of defeat as he watches his empire being legitimately taken.”
The party said it was shocking that Tinubu could be in cahoots with President Buhari, while at the same time claiming to be on the side of democrats.
“It is however not a surprise that Tinubu is in severe pain because President Obasanjo exposed their rigging plans. Asiwaju had always won elections for himself and his cronies through rigging and this accounts for his bitterness,” the party said.
It listed what he termed Tinubu’s rigging might as typified in the Osun State election, where it said results were manipulated in order not to “disgrace” the fading politics of the APC leader.
“However, PDP states in unequivocal terms that President Obasanjo, contrary to Tinubu’s claims, did not at any time, assure our party that he holds sway throughout the South-West and as such will deliver Osun state to the PDP
“It is also important to state that the people’s candidate, Atiku Abubakar, did not also claim to have rigged election in the South-West. However, if Tinubu today denies his affinity with Atiku Abubakar, which is well known in the entire nation, then he can deny even his own existence
“Moreover, it is an established fact that Obasanjo remains a statesman and a global figure who always speaks the truth to power and put the interest of our nation above all.
“Under President Obasanjo, there were no sacred cows in the fight against corruption, unlike what we are witnessing today, in which corruption has become pervasive under President Buhari in the Presidential Villa,” the statement read.
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