By Kingston Magare
Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo’s take that Nigeria’s electoral body was due for overhaul because its overtly corrupt nature, has not gone down well with President Bola Tinubu and his aides.
Obasanjo, while speaking at the Yale University Connecticut, USA during the annual Chinua Achebe memorial lecture, said the Independent National Electoral Commission’s conducted of the 2023 elections which Tinubu won amidst allegations of massive rigging and result manipulation needs a new leadership with short tenures to prevent corruption.
“Nigeria must ensure the appointment of new credible INEC leadership at the federal, state, local government, and municipal – city, town, and village – levels, with short tenures to prevent undesirable political influence and corruption, and to re-establish trust in the electoral system by its citizens,” Obasanjo stated.
But reacting to the jibe Monday, President Tinubu’s special adviser on public communication and orientation, Sunday Dare, shot back at Obasanjo saying his administration was corrupt and Nigerians are still facing consequences of his misrule.
“Former President Obasanjo is a man with a tremendous capacity for mischief, and Nigerians know it. His journey along the path of hallucinations has never been in doubt. So is his descent into muddling facts, forgetting that he ran a presidency on record as the most corrupt” Mr. Dare said.
“It is actually laughable that Obasanjo’s pretentiousness about fighting corruption is not cutting any ice in the eyes of the general public. We all know what happened under his watch and how, up till the present moment, there has been no explanation as to how he wasted a whopping $16 billion in generating megawatts of darkness across the nation. But that is not even the issue.
“Obasanjo has lost any moral right to condemn any government. He should apologise to Nigerians for not laying the foundational infrastructure Nigeria needed to advance.”
Not Yet...Tinubu and Obasanjo