Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president, has come under fire from the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide for remarks he made regarding the recent elections in Nigeria.
The organization also condemned the former president’s comments directed against Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the head of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The former president reportedly called the 2023 general elections a travesty at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He also called for the appointment of new, credible leaders for INEC with brief tenures in order to thwart corruption and restore confidence.
Additionally, he charged that the electoral board was purposefully undermining the 2023 general election process.
We urgently need to ensure that the INEC chairperson and his or her staff are thoroughly vetted. The vetting exercise should yield dispassionate, non-partisan actors with impeccable reputations.
Nigeria must make sure that fresh, trustworthy INEC officials are appointed to positions at the federal, state, local, and municipal levels—city, town, and village—with brief terms in order to stop undesired political influence and corruption and restore public confidence in the country’s voting institutions.
Prior to 2023, Obasanjo stated, “two technological innovations, the BVAS and IReV, were hailed for their potential to remove the threat of election rigging, increase public trust in electoral outcomes, and improve the accuracy and transparency of our election results.”
Mazi Okwu Nnabuike, the National President of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide, responded by accusing the previous president of creating the framework for a weak election system in the nation.
In a statement, Okwu claimed that during the previous president’s administration, election results were declared while Nigerian voters were still waiting in line to cast their ballots.
“Results were written in the homes of lawmakers and the government. Under Obasanjo’s leadership, the phrase “go to court” gained popularity, meaning that those who were sobbing were supposed to go in court when INEC announced the winner, which was all that counted.
It’s no surprise that the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, a man of integrity, bemoaned the serious flaws in the election that put him in office. “Obasanjo was president when the aforementioned election took place,” Okwu stated.
He asserts that during his tenure, Obasanjo failed to implement any significant election changes.