By Chukwuma Umeorah
The Yoruba Council Worldwide (YCW) has accused former president Olusegun Obasanjo of making false accusations and statements capable of inciting violence and subverting peace across and the country.
YCW made this declaration on the backdrop of an open letter by the former president where he accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of corruption by some of its official who sabotaged the conduct of a free and fair elections and demanded the cancellation and rerun in areas where the election did not meet the credibility and transparency test.
Speaking at a press conference in Lagos, Tuesday, the president of YCW, Oladotun Hassan, while dissociating the group from Obasanjo said that his comments are were selfish, without substantial backings and was a deliberate attempt to scuttle the ongoing electoral process which was already at the collation stage.
He disclosed that the content of his letter was capable of instigating one ethnic group against another, creating a recipe for violence, anarchy and full implosion that may take many years to repair. He therefore noted strongly that Obasanjo’s stance does not in any way represent the position of the Yoruba people.
According to him, “Obasanjo is desperate to impose his endorsed political son, Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) on all Nigerians without due respect to our franchise will, having sacrificed our efforts to vote for our choices on last Saturday.”
Hassan also claimed that he (Obasanjo) lacked the moral integrity to make such comments which according to him, “Under his watch as former president of Nigeria, Obasanjo midwifed an election that was plagued with duress, mass killings and unprecedented electoral malpractice,” accusing him of propounding the ‘do or die’ ideology in the Nigerian electoral system.
Th President of Yoruba Leaders Forum, United Kingdom, Olufemi Ogunjimi, said that Obasanjo’s stance on the conduct of the elections and on previous issues of national interests had made him lose the respect the Yorubas had for him as an elder statesman.
“He has no respect for rule of law. We condemn his ways, statement and political views in this country. We urge the federal government to immediately take action against him because he is inviting chaos by going to the media to instigate one ethnic group against the other.”
He called on all Yoruba leaders and indigenous civil society groups who had in the past honored Obasanjo to strip him of all titles and recognition as he has never done anything to benefit the Yoruba tribe but rather continue to chastise them.
He also called on all law enforcement agency to be on red alert to immediately arrest anyone instigating or inciting violence either by utterance or deeds even as he beckoned on all presidential candidates to maintain their peace accord demands in line with National Peace Committee’s mandate as he advised that “no one’s blood is worth the election.”
The Indigenous group reiterated confidence in INEC as it urged them to continue the result computation process in line with the dictates of the Laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.