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 conveyed 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, who urged Nigerians to strive and ensure that the polls hold at all costs, spoke, yesterday, when he played host to the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) at his penthouse residence located within the premises of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta, Ogun State.
The ADC national leaders were led by the national chairman of the party, Prof. Ralph Nwosu, BoT chairman, Dr Mani Ibrahim Ahmed and a former presidential aspirant of the ADC, Chukwuka Monye.
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 faulted reports that it is pushing for a postponement of the elections. APC’s National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, described that report (not in The Guardian) as blatantly false and reckless, which bears no iota of credibility.
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.