Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is optimistic that nothing will interfere with the successful conduct of the general elections scheduled for February 25 and March 11.
Obasanjo’s comment is coming ahead of tomorrow’s emergency meeting of the Council of State convened by President Muhammadu Buhari, where major decisions are expected to be taken to douse tension over the scarcity of naira notes,
This is also coming amid fears that the elections might be postponed due to an ongoing crisis occasioned by the scarcity of fuel and new naira notes.
The former president urged Nigerians to strive and ensure that the polls are held at all costs. He spoke yesterday when he hosted the African Democratic Congress (ADC) Board of Trustees (BoT) at his penthouse residence, which is located within the premises of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
The ADC national leaders were led by Prof. Ralph Nwosu, the party’s national chairman; Dr. Mani Ibrahim Ahmed, the BoT chairman; and Chukwuka Monye, a former presidential aspirant of the ADC.
Stating that the attention of the global community is now focused on the 2023 polls in Nigeria, Obasanjo charged Nigerians, as the main stakeholders, to contribute towards the success of the elections.
Obasanjo said: “We are in an interesting period in Nigeria. In less than three weeks, we will be going to the polls; well, I hope nothing will intervene against that. In less than three weeks, we will be electing a leader that will pilot the affairs of Nigeria for the next four years from May.
“I have been in Togo, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire from the beginning of the week; and they are as concerned about what happens in Nigeria as every Nigerian should be.
“Before I left Abidjan, President Alassane Quattara of Cote d’Ivoire was telling me about a position that Cote d’Ivoire is fighting for and he told me that ‘we are putting it on hold until after Nigeria’s elections.’ So, even for them, Nigeria’s elections are of utmost importance.”
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has criticized reports that it is pushing for a postponement of the elections. APC’s National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, described the report (not in The Guardian) as blatantly false and reckless, which is non credible.
Obasanjo added, “Beyond its loud headline, the report offers no substantive justifying content aside from its intended purpose of misleading and causing needless anxiety and speculations regarding the upcoming elections. It bears reiterating that the underlying report is fake news.”
REPORTERS AT LARGE earlier reported that barely 16 days before the presidential election, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, yesterday, visited the Presidential Villa, Abuja, where he briefed the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting and reassured that the polls will hold as scheduled despite the scarcity of fuel and cash.
