AdewunmiFunmi:


All Progressives Congress (APC) stalwart Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has said former President Olusegun Obasanjo has no moral right to accuse anybody of rigging.

Obasanjo accused President Muhammadu Buhari of planning to rig the February 16 election.

Tinubu, in a statement yesterday, said: “By hook, crook or utter fantasy, Obasanjo seeks to return to Aso Villa, not as an irritating, importuning guest but as a long-term resident. He wants to be back in control. If he cannot be president, then the president better carve from his office a special room for Obasanjo.

“Obasanjo thinks he is more than the greatest Nigerian. He thinks himself greater than Nigeria itself. Unless he is allowed to lead the procession, he will groan, grouse and grit. However, neither President Buhari nor the progressive APC have much use for his reactionary policies and his megalomaniac ways.

“Thus, we shall be forced to endure more of his letters. But enduring such missives is vastly superior and small price to pay for not having to endure a repeat of his unenlightened misgovernance.”

To Tinubu, the former leader is at war against his deeds and the least qualified to complain about rigging.

According to him, Obasanjo is unrivalled in the history of election manipulation; a record he said was confirmed by the former president, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, who succeeded him in 2007.

Obasanjo had in a 16-page statement on Sunday alleged that Buhari was manipulating the electoral process to perpetrate himself in office like the late Head of State Gen. Sani Abacha.

Tinubu, who is the Co-Chairman of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council, said the former president was projecting on to the APC the misconduct he would have perpetrated if still in power.

“Yet, the ways of Obasanjo are not those of the APC. And this difference has meant the better for Nigeria,” Tinubu said yesterday in his strongly-worded response in which he described the former president as an election rigger without peer.

He said: “There is no election which occurred under Obasanjo’s watch or in which he participated that did not involve cheating on his part. Even, the late President Umaru Musa Yar‘Adua admitted he was the beneficiary of a flawed election engineered by none other than today’s vociferous complainant.”

The riposte, personally signed by the former Lagos State governor, has its title as: “Chief Obasanjo – At war against his own deeds”.

Tinubu’s statement reads: “Former President Obasanjo is many things to many people; but he is all things unto himself. His recent contribution to our political discourse wherein he alleges plots to steer the coming elections shows he benefits from an exceedingly faulty memory, is purely shameless or has a most wicked sense of humor. Perhaps all three are facets of his makeup and were equally on display in his latest prosaic display.