Election: Nigeria ‘ll never have Rwandan experience – Osoba
…insist Obi, Atiku’s claim, an attempt to draw us back
Former governor of Ogun State, Aremo Olusegun Osoba has urged supporters of the Labour Party Presidential Candidate, Mr. Peter Obi also called Obidients not to allow their grievance over the presidential elections snowball into a tribal and religious crisis.
Chief Osoba who was fielding questions on TVC’s Journalist hangout prayed that Nigeria shall never experience the Runwandar situations.
Asked the kind of president he foresees the president-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu would be, the APC chieftain said: “He has the capacity to create stability and unity.
” He will be a team playing president. For example the oil sector, I expect him to block all the leakages. One thing I know is that he is a very courageous character. He is a very hardworking person.
“I was involved with the late MKO Abiola saga, I pray we shall never have a Rwanda situation in Nigeria.
“I must say with all sense of responsibility, this has been the most peaceful election that we have ever had and again, this is one election where the turnout was very large. Although they keep comparing to other elections, in the case of this election, the voting process was sanitised. As far as I am concerned, this election is the most peaceful and reasonably transparent.
Because the BVAS did not load in time should not be the reason why anybody need to query the result because the result had been counted, collated at the polling units, ward level and signed, collated on local government level and signed, and then to the House of Rep centres and Senatorial centres, then at the state level, the presidential election resulted was collated there and signed. About six levels have been found to be collated. I can assure you that at the time compared to what is on the server, it would tally with time and date.
I have been involved in elections since 1959, Asiwaju’s spread is the best I have ever seen. He is a candidate that defies all odds ; in the middle belt, where we had religious issues, he won Benue, he made his mark in Plateau, he won Kogi , he won Kwara, he won Niger State. In the Caliphate, Atiku won by about 3000 margin to Asiwaju’s votes. Atiku won in Osun, it beat my imagination that Atiku could win in Osun. So is Atiku saying that he also rigged in Osun?
Look at Obi’s performance; in Nasarawa, Obi won, in Lagos, he won, in Delta, he won. So as far as I am concerned, this election has shown that this election is a prime mandate and secondly, Southern and Northern Nigeria showed unity. Take Asiwaju for instance; a man who can win 25 per cent in 29 out of 36 states, in other words, a man who scored 80 per cent and you are saying he manipulated the examination, I still can’t get it.
Asked the factors that determine the action, he said: “there are so many factors; in the first place, you can criticise INEC till eternity, the introduction of BVAS sanitised the process. It reduced rigging heavily. So when you look at the whole thing you realise that the factors that influence the elections were many.
I praise the Nigerian youths and I am appealing to elder statesmen to find the need for reconciliation and resolve. The Christian communities are complaining about the Muslim-Muslim ticket, what are the things that you want? The youth should be able to say the election is over, these are the things that we want.
Asked about the claim of Obi and Atiku that they won the election, Osoba said “it is an attempt to draw us back and create chaos within the system because they all have the results signed by their agents all over the country and they know what happened. To now claim they won the election is a disappointment to me. I assure you that Nigerians are wiser now. Nobody will be instigated or provoked into turning the nation on fire.
On uploading Result
Asked why INEC didn’t upload the result, Osoba added saying “The youth have the right to question INEC’s inability to upload the result instantly as promised from the polling units. But as an investigative journalist, I made my investigation and I gathered there were so many attempts to jam INEC portal and server and that would have created chaos for INEC. It is unfortunate that INEC has not handled their public relations well. They should have told the world that they deliberately shutdown their portal to protect their information from being hacked. Asked the banks in Nigeria how much they are losing to mobile bank hackers. I will urge everybody to wait but if Obi and Atiku are complaining about rigging, they should give specific information not random then I will accept”.
