…cautions Obasanjo over incendiary statement
A pressure group under the aegis of Arewa New Agenda enjoined the president-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to take decisive steps by extending the hand of fellowship to aggrieved candidates of the major parties to douse the tension across the country who lost the presidential election.
This is even as the group called on former President Olusegun Obasanjo to exercise restraint over his position on Saturday’s presidential election to avoid throwing the country into anarchy.
Briefing journàlists in Abuja, the national convener of ANA, Senator Ahmad Moallahyidi, said the North urged Nigerians to close ranks and support the incoming administration in the spirit of national cohesion.
While expressing displeasure over the recent calls by Obasanjo for the election to be cancelled, Moallahyidi disclosed that such inciting utterances are at variance with peaceful coexistence among peace-loving Nigerians.
He said, “We read Chief Obasanjo’s press release calling on the INEC Chairman to bow to some of his caprices which has gone viral as we believe that is one of the aims he set out to achieve. In it, he shared his thoughts about how he thinks things should go in the electioneering process for the 2023 national elections.
“We are sure he is aware that his disposition has triggered a lot of debates and engendered mixed reactions nationwide; it has been perceived in different ways by different people depending on their political persuasions and the interests they represent.
“He was president on two terms in our current democratic dispensation (1999-2007); he is a retired general (A national veteran) and an elder statesman. All these he has earned and we deeply respect and hold him in very high esteem. We however depart from him in his penchant for fanning the embers of regionalism, ethnicity and sectionalism.
“How can you say a political electioneering process where Tinubu couldn’t deliver Lagos; Ganduje couldn’t deliver Kano, El-Rufai couldn’t deliver Kaduna, Buhari couldn’t deliver Katsina; APC Chairman couldn’t deliver Nasarawa; Ahmed Lawan couldn’t deliver Yobe; Lalong couldn’t deliver Plateau and even lost his senatorial bid; Philip Aduda couldn’t deliver Abuja; South East Governors lost in South East, is this same election that you are vilifying as a corrupted process?”
