FemiO
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“Getting back to my mother, I still remember your beating her up continually when we were kids. What kids can forget that kind of violence against their mother?
Your maltreatment of women is legendary. Many of your women have come out to denounce you in public but since your madness is also part of the madness of the society, it is the women that are usually ignored and mistreated” – Professor Iyabo Obasanjo, PhD, psychoanalysing her father in an unsparing, no holds barred letter dated December 16, 2013.
The above should enable Nigerians know who is advising them because Yorubas say you should first look at what somebody offering to make a Christmas dress for you is wearing.
After describing the 2023 Presidential election in which his candidate, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, through whom he had probably intended to resurrect his Third Term Project was beaten blue and black to the third place as a travesty, former President Olusegun Obasanjo
went on to say much more at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum in Yale University, U.S.A, where he recently presented a paper on ‘Leadership failure and state capture in Nigeria’.
He sermonised:
“As a matter of urgency, we must ensure the INEC Chairperson and their staff are thoroughly vetted. The vetting exercise should produce dispassionate, non-partisan actors with impeccable reputations.
“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, further adding that “The INEC Chairperson must not only be absolutely above board but must also be transparently independent and incorruptible.”
Pray! When did Chief Obasanjo know all these: after he graduated from the Open University?
Or, good as they are, how exactly did his 2007 hatchetman, the one and only Maurice Mmaduakolam
Iwu, of blessed memory, square up to these prescriptions?
Knowing full well that Iwu did not act on his own volition how come the man whose cross the unfortunate Professor carried to his grave, could now turn round to lay strictures against INEC?
Indeed, how on earth should that proceed from the mouth of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a man who was the ‘Capo di tutti’ of election manipulation in the annals of Nigerian history, a mere 17 years after? He must really think he could, so soon sell Nigerians a hagiography.
But not so fast because just as Google never forgets, History doesn’t, either.
So to his face today, we would count the former president’s nine toes.
In the first place, consequent upon the rigging that characterised elections in the 2007 election cycle which was superintended over by his government, nearly all the governorship elections in the Southwest, including Edo state, were voided by the Appeal Court.
The election, his last in government, was scored very low by everybody; its Chief beneficiary, the highly regarded President Umar Yar’ Adua inclusive, just as the U. S National Democratic Institute whose leader, Madeleine Albrigh, then the U. S Secretary of State, herself an observer at the selfsame election, described it as the worst election ever, anywhere in the whole world, Myanmar inclusive.
It is important that Chief Obasanjo be freshly reminded of that shameful election just in case it has all escaped his very busy mind.
I shall do this using the instrumentality of just
one of my many articles on the luckiest ever Nigerian Public Servant.
Titled ‘A Grandstanding Former President Olusegun Obasanjo’, and dated 8 April, 2018, it reads as follows:
The letter below (that letter would not be included in this recall) from Chief Deji Fasuan MON, is the leitmotif for this article at a time Obasanjo’s one-upmanship has again reached a crescendo.
The two-term Nigerian Head of state has been grandstanding of late describing, in lurid terms, the sitting President Muhammadu Buhari, just as he has done to everybody who held that position other than himself.
Many have tried to posit that it does not lie in Obasanjo’s place to continuously trash a sitting President since he has access and has, indeed, been justifiably described as the greatest pilgrim to Buhari’s Aso Villa until recently.
But that is when you hear some busy bodies asking you to mind the message, not the messenger.
Of course, I do not subscribe to such sentiments since my position is that deeds, rather than talk, which is cheap, should be the determining factor, being far more indicative of who the preacher really is.
In justification of my views, I present below a sample of Obasanjo’s performance in office using election rigging, which was archetypical of everything he did in office.
A decent, late President Yar Adua self-confessed the rigging of his own election, the reason I chose it for this analysis.
I present below, a report of that election as captured by Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
THE NIGERIAN GENERAL ELECTION, 2007. REACTIONS
“Ikimi and Amusu, representatives of the AC and the ANPP respectively, at the INEC Collation Centre in Abuja, denounced the results announced by the INEC Chairman. According to Ikimi, “In states like Edo, Enugu, Ebonyi, Imo, Akwa Ibom etc, we know that the elections did not start even as late as 5 pm.
The results collated showed that over 80 percent of the votes being counted were in favour of the PDP and they are totally flawed. In most of the states, only the Resident Electoral Commissioners and PDP Agents signed results. We have been here since yesterday (Sunday) to observe this collation and we have collated only eleven states when the INEC Chairman rushed down to declare the results announcing Umoru Yar’Adua the winner.” Continued Ikimi: “The result sheets we viewed so far were not signed by any of our agents at the state level. They were only signed by Resident Electoral Commissioners and PDP agents.”
The national Chairman of the Democratic Peoples Alliance (DPA), Chief Olu Falae, with leaders of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the Action Congress (AC), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), National Advance Party (NAP) and the National Democratic Party (NDP), has called for the setting up of an Interim National Government to conduct credible elections in the country. Chief Falae suggested that the country needed an ING to guard against the emergence of the military.
The Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organisation claimed that INEC deliberately left 70 percent of the ballot papers in a warehouse in Johannesburg, South Africa. We heard that the contractors could have freighted the entire 200-ton consignment into the country three days before the election (Thursday) but INEC instructed them to bring only 30 percent of the ballot papers”.
Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, said that the West should deny entry visas to INEC Chairman, Maurice Iwu for his complicity in the fraudulent elections. He said he has heard of the financial prudence and moral uprightness of Yar’Adua and wished he would publicly renounce the poisoned chalice..
OBSERVERS
Groups monitoring the election gave it a dismal assessment. The Chief European Union observer, Max van den Berg, reported that the handling of the polls had “fallen far short” of basic international standards, and that “the process cannot be considered to be credible”, citing “poor election organisation, lack of transparency, significant evidence of fraud, voter disenfranchisement, violence and bias”.
One group of observers said that at one polling station in Yenagoa, in the oil-rich south, where 500 people were registered to vote, more than 2,000 votes were recorded.
INTERNATIONAL REACTION
A spokesman for the United States Department of State said it was “deeply troubled” by the election, calling it flawed. “Nigeria has once again failed to rise to the occasion… Size isn’t enough… It is a failed giant,” said prominent Ghanaian economist Nii Moi Thompson who compared the elections to those of Liberia in 2005, saying, “Even Liberia, which is coming out of war, had more credible elections than Nigeria”.
“There is the saying: ‘How goes Nigeria, so goes the rest of Africa’. To have this widespread abuse of the democratic initiative certainly doesn’t do Africa any good,” said U.S Professor Scott Baker. “How can Nigeria sit at the meetings of the African Union African Peer Review Mechanism or ECOWAS and talk about other peoples’ elections?” he asked.
That, Nigerians, is the record of our Mr Clean.
It’s time we have an Election Malpractices Tribunal which, as happened in Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, will have no respect for persons, no matter the office.
IN LOVING & CHERISHED MEMORY OF AMBASSADOR OLUFEMI ANI.
Not again!.
Dipo this evening informed me of Bro Femi’s passing.
It was an absolutely devastating news because I had a long, forever cherished relationship with the Ambassador, dating all the way back to 1958.
That year he hosted me during my interview at Government College, Ibadan to which only 4 of us, Ekiti, were invited in Ondo state.
I became very close to him in later life, and on one occasion recruited a Secretary for him.
My wife and I used to joke that if the Ambassador bought something of N5000 from you, he would rather give you a cheque than pay cash, as he did a few times buying wine in our T.Club.
A very handsome, ever sartorially turned out gentleman, Bro Femi was great to be with.
He will be sorely missed but glory to God, he lived a highly impactful life which spanned not just diplomacy, his forte, but also such diverse areas as business, international relations, sports and community service.
We thank God that he is survived by high achieving children who will keep the flag flying.
May the Almighty God grant him eternal rest and comfort the family he left behind, our natal town, Are – Ekiti, which will be deeply impacted at the loss of another distinguished son, so soon after (that of) Professor Femi Olaofe, inclusive.
Adieu.
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