The Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE) and the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) yesterday asked President Olusegun Obasanjo to immediately resign from office following his confession on the electoral malpractices in the 2003 polls as contained in his letter to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) nati-onal Chairman, Audu Ogbeh.
YCE also called on the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Comm-ission (INEC), Dr Abel Guo-badia, and the Anambra State Governor, Dr Chris Ngige, to vacate their offices without delay.
The President of the Yoruba socio-cultural group, Major General Adeyemi Adebayo (rtd), who made the council’s position known to Daily Trust in Lagos, said Obasanjo has no moral rectitude to remain in office for concealing the alleged confession made by Ngige that he did not win the Ana-mbra gubernatorial polls.
Obasanjo had, in his tersely-worded response to Ogbeh’s letter last week on the protracted Anambra crisis, said Ngige admitted to losing the election.
Adebayo, however, lamented that the president had to wait this long before making the revelation, despite his claims to transparency and due process.
“If Ngige said so, he (Obasanjo), as a president from the same party who wants honesty, sincerity, transparency and everything for the country, I thought that was the right time for him to use the big stick. The president should have said ‘we don’t want this kind of thing in Nigeria any more, get out of the place’.”
Arguing that Obasanjo had lost moral confidence to remain in office, Adebayo said the president should have asked INEC to revisit the Anambra gubernatorial poll results. He said also that the elec-tion tribunal hearing the petition filed by the All Progr-essive Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate in Ana-mbra, Mr Peter Obi, should take judicial notice of Obas-anjo’s revelation.
CNPP, in an open letter to the president yesterday, signed by the group’s Chai-rman, Abdulkkadir Balarabe Musa, said Obasanjo’s resp-onse to Ogbeh was an indic-tment and therefore he must throw in the towel.
Musa said: “the CNPP is of the firm view that having confessed your role in a robbery and the part you played in sharing the loot in your residence, at least in Anambra State, your failure in many respects to meet the standards for a president of Nigeria and the threat to peace and the continued exi-stence of Nigeria, you have wholly and totally lost any claim to the right to occupy the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nig-eria and you should resign with immediate effect.”
The letter entitled: “No, Mr President, three armed robbers met in your resi-dence,” suggested that tho-se who conspired to rig the Anambra polls were robbers who robbed the people of their mandate.
“CNPP has carefully con-sidered the contents of your letter, particularly the repro-duced foregoing portion, and the conference has reached the following conclusions:
* Only an armed robber will attempt to reconcile armed robbers;
* Considering the fact that the 2003 presidential elec-tion you contested and the gubernatorial election contested by Ngige were held on the same day and at the same time and the same polling stations in Anambra State, Chris Uba was talking to you and Ng-ige when he spoke the wo-rds you quoted in your letter;
* Considering the direct role you played in Anambra State during the 2003 presidential and guberna-torial elections, you are today an accessory before and after the fact of rob-bery whose loot you are continuing to enjoy…,” the letter said.
CNPP concluded that the electoral malpractices in Anambra were not alone. “The 2003 robbery reached every state of Nigeria and it is the debilitating effects of the robbery that the national chairman of your party addr-essed in his letter to you.”
Also speaking, the former Works and Housing Mini-ster, Major General Abdu-lkarim Adisa (rtd), cautioned yesterday that the cold war between President Olusegun Obasanjo and national Chairman of the People’s De-mocratic Party (PDP), Chief Audu Ogbeh, could lead to disintegration of the party.
Describing the feud as unpalatable in an interview with newsmen, Major Gen-eral Adisa said: “there is no way the two gladiators could work together again,” appa-rently comparing the develo-pment to Orji Kalu of Abia State and Chief Anthony Anenih’s crisis.
The former minister adv-ised that personal interest should not override party interest in any democracy, hence the need for amicable settlement of the issues at stake for national interest.
He said harmonisation of work for the return of General Ibrahim Babangida as the president in 2007 elections was in progress, just as a new name for the project wo-uld emerge early next year.
General Adisa, while thanking President Obasanjo for his condolence message on his father’s death, apolo-gised for the maltreatment of two journalists in the hands of security aides attached to the Oyo State Governor, Alhaji Rasheed Ladoja, dur-ing the Fidau prayers held last week in Ilorin.
Meanwhile, the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the People’s Dem-ocratic Party (PDP) ended with Chief Audu Ogbeh’s led executive narrowly escaping being suspended.
The meeting, which las-ted for several hours, was initially put off security rea-son just as Chief Audu Og-beh cancelled a press confer-ence he was billed to address in the morning.
Sources at the meeting said the absence of President Obasanjo nearly put off the meeting, but NEC members later decided to go ahead with the consent of the president, particularly that the PDP governors were in attendance.
Intense lobbying and strategising at the NEC meeting, which ended at about 8:30 p.m., to sack the PDP executive led by Ogbeh was stalled by the superior argument of most of the governors who opposed the attempts.
Out of the 28 PDP gover-nors, 23 were in attendance, except those of Bayelsa, Kogi, Katsina, Plateau and Akwa-Ibom, and more than half of those in attendance were unanimous in opposing the orchestrated attempts to sack Ogbeh and his executive.
The pro-Ogbeh governors argued that the national chairman of the ruling party had led the party to victory and would be out of place to treat him dishonourable, because, according to them, he merely wrote a discreet letter to the president on the state of the nation and did not make any public statement. They said he was not responsible for the leakage of the letter.
Briefing newsmen at the end of the meeting, Audu Ogbeh said it was resolved that the executive of the PDP led by him would not be dissolved, even as members expressed mixed feelings about the letter he wrote to the president and the reply by the president.
“The debate was very healthy, and very warm. Many members expressed strong reservations about the letter. Many were not happy about it and thought it should not have been written; that there should have been an avenue for dialogue. Some were also disappointed by the resonance. Some also wanted the NWC sacked; some wanted me sacked but at the end of the debate; we agreed that, first, we should just promote unity and reconciliation in the party and also avoid situ-ations in the party and the country which could bring about such tension in the future.”
He said he did not regret his actions, adding that it is natural for there to be disagreement in a democracy.
The Secretary of the PDP Board of Trustees, Professor Jerry Gana who also spoke to newsmen earlier at the venue of the meeting, saying the crisis in the PDP was due to the absence of a viable opposition party, and that the PDP is reacting to internal opposition. |
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