Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Sunday accused the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of planning to rig the upcoming national elections slated for February.
“I personally have serious doubts about the present INEC’s integrity, impartiality and competence to conduct a fair, free and credible election,” Obasanjo said, urging Nigerians in a statement to the plot by the government to rig the elections.
Buhari who is seeking re-election on February 16 took office on May 29, 2015, winning the last elections held in March 2015 on the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) defeating then sitting president Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
That was the first time in the country’s history that an opposition candidate had won at the ballot box against an incumbent head of state.
Vote out Buhari
Obasanjo further called on Nigerians in the statement issued in Abeokuta city to vote out Buhari for failing to manage the country’s security crisis.
“The security situation has deteriorated with kidnappings everywhere and Boko Haram being more in action and nobody should deceive Nigerians about this,” Obasanjo said.
“This administration has reached the end of its wit even in handling security issues, particularly the Boko Haram issue, partly due to misuse of security apparatus and poor equipment, deployment, coordination and cooperation,” he stressed.
Obasanjo continued: “Buhari has intimidated and harassed the private sector, attacked the National Assembly and now unconstitutionally and recklessly attacked and intimidated the judiciary to cow them to submission,”
“Today, another Abacha era is here. Security institutions are being misused to fight critics and opponents of Buhari and to derail our democracy.”
Rigging elections outrageous
President Buhari’s office rejected the accusations as outrageous and outlandish.
“The claim that President Buhari has put in place rigging machinery is both outlandish and outrageous. We are unable to get words to describe a 90-year old liar, except to say that with his lies against the President, it is Obasanjo, not the president, who falls in esteem,” Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu said.
“This language of his 16-page letter, likening President Buhari to General Sani Abacha, a man he dreaded and the one who jailed him under military laws, is most unfitting from a former President of Nigeria,” Shehu added.
Source: Africafeeds.com
