Akinyemi urges Tinubu to stop recurring national electoral disgrace
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Bola Tinubu agitated for political reform when his party was not in power and now that he is in Aso Rock he should take the bull by the horns to implement the Uwais Committee report to sanitise the political system, former Foreign Affairs Minister Bolaji Akinyemi has urged the President.
Akinyemi, a professor and member of the Uwais Committee – along with other eminent personalities such as Olisa Agbakoba, SAN and Matthew Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, among others – was commenting on the presidential election in Liberia in which incumbent George Weah congratulated Joseph Boakai who defeated him.
Akinyemi clarified on Arise News that Weah accepted defeat and congratulated Boakai because the process was free, fair, and transparent for everyone to see – unlike in elections in Nigeria that are buffeted by violence, rigging, and other forms of irregularities.
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Rubbing salt on electoral wound
Some have urged Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi to also congratulate Tinubu, but both opponents see it as rubbing salt on an injury since they insist the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) rigged the vote.
Rigging, the opposition argues, enabled Tinubu to “snatch, grab, and run” with his so-called victory – as he boasted he would do before the election – with the connivance of the judiciary, up to the Supreme Court.
Akinyemi counselled Nigeria to learn a lot from the Liberian electoral process, describing election in Nigeria as “a disgrace.”
He recounted how the Uwais Electoral Reform Committee was established in 2007 by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, insisting the report remains the yardstick for Nigeria’s electoral reform.
“The PDP buried that report because they thought they would be in power forever. And they lost the election. And now, the APC is in power,” he said.
“This is my advice to President Tinubu. Please exhume that report, the 2014 national conference report and then the El-Rufai Report. Don’t call for another conference. “Set up a small committee for them to integrate these reports and come up with the recommendation for him.”
The “disgrace” in Nigeria’s electoral process is so sordid that Obi’s former presidential running mate Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed two weeks ago insisted Tinubu remains a drug dealer because the court did not clear him of the crime.
Besides, the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) domiciled in the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court both used legal technicalities to reject the evidence Atiku presented on Tinubu’s alleged certificate forgery in Nigeria and the United States, which would have constitutionally disqualified him from office if proven.