Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has disclosed how the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost the 1998 local government elections in Ogun State because he turned down plans to bribe officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the police.
He made the announcement yesterday at a high-level consultation on ‘Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy in Africa’ at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta.
The former president stated that he rejected the plan because he believed INEC officials and police officers were government employees who were paid on a monthly basis. He stated that he was not a supporter of the term ‘Nigerian factor,’ explaining his refusal to bribe police and INEC officials to facilitate his party’s victory at the time.
“When things go wrong, you say the Nigerian factor. The first thing I learnt in politics was this thing called ‘Nigerian factor.’ In 1998, we had the first local government election. We had parties, and here in Abeokuta, we met in my office and they came up and said, ‘look, this is money for INEC, money for the police.’ At a stage I said, ‘what nonsense! Is the police not being paid, and INEC too?’
“They said that’s how we do it. I said you cannot do that. So, they didn’t do that. And of course, we lost all the local governments. We lost all. And then they came to me and said, Baba, you see? If you had allowed us to do it the way we used to do it, we would have won. And I felt guilty. During the next election which was the state assembly, I just stayed in my house. I said well, do whatever you want to do, I will not be part of it. So, I didn’t even go. But, the result was the same. One of the people who got money didn’t even distribute it to where he was supposed to distribute it.”
He, however, insisted that the Western liberal democracy being practised in Africa has not really taken human nature and the African situation into full account.
“When you are hungry, whatever anybody tells you cannot go in. Poverty is a great enemy of democracy. Ignorance or lack of education is a great enemy of democracy. And we seem to be deliberately fomenting poverty and lack of education,” he submitted.