April 16, 2003
ASO ROCK:
Dear General Buhari:
I feel constrained to write
you this letter on an issue which I presume to be of common concern to you and
me, first as members of the National Council of State, and as presidential
candidates of our respective parties in the current general elections.
May I remind you that the responsibility for ensuring the success of these
elections transcends our individual ambitions at the polls. It is a national
responsibility by which all Nigerians expect us to assure them of peace and
stability during these elections and beyond
I am alarmed at the reports reaching me of utterances by yourself which seem to
convey consequences that are disruptive to law and order by your political
supporters and members of you party, the ANPP. It is my sincere hope that the
suggestion of a call to civil disobedience, and even violence, is a
misinterpretation of these utterances by a former Head of State and a
Presidential Candidate who aspires to govern a democratically united and
peaceful Nigeria.
You are reported to have cited the remarkable success of the Peoples Democratic
Party at the election of last Saturday as basis for the utterances. The facts,
which are readily available to all observers, is that, whereas the PDP did
indeed make dramatic gains in some parts of the country, this is equally true of
ANPP making gains in other parts of the country, all at the expense of PDP. The
details, I believe, are sufficiently familiar to you, and are therefore not
worth mentioning here.
I would only like to point out to you that the PDP has been most willing to
accept being losers where ANPP has gained. On your part, while you savour the
victory of your party, you may as well concede defeat where other parties were
victorious. This attitude, apart from being sportsmanlike, would be extremely
helpful for our nascent democracy that all Nigerians are demonstrably keen to
establish for this nation. In any case, it is certainly illogical, if not
irresponsible, to portray instances of victory by the other side as evidence of
electoral malpractice, while total victory on your part goes unmentioned.
Furthermore, it is on record that the PDP in relevant states has vigorously
protested against manifestations of irregularities and malpractices that
attended its defeat, and the party is in the process of dealing with such
situations according to electoral regulations.
Let me emphatically urge you not to incite the society and law enforcement
agencies. You know, both as military leader and former head of state that direct
appeal and incitement of law enforcement agencies and the military against
lawfully constituted authority is both reprehensible and extremely unfortunate.
So also is your encouragement of civil disobedience rather than pursuit of
redress in accordance with laid-down electoral regulations.
I am sure that you do not need reminding that, I, as the elected president, have
the responsibility for maintaining peace, law and order, at any time and in
every part of this country. This responsibility transcends party politics. This
is a constitutional responsibility that I owe to this nation. And I intend to
use all constitutional means and authority to discharge this responsibility to
the full, election time or not".
I am taking the liberty to make the contents of this letter available to members
of the National Council of State and all other persons that I believe need to
know because they share the concerns hereby expressed.
Olusegun Obasanjo
President of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria
And Commander-in-Chief
April 16, 2003
The contents of the President's letter to General
Muhammadu Buhari got to the media even before the ANPP Presidential Candidate
received it. We find that very inappropriate and quite out of order. We have
also noticed from the contents of the letter that it is either the president has
misunderstood the Press Conference of April 16, 2003, which was delivered by the
ANPP Presidential candidate on behalf of the Presidential Candidates of the
Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) or has deliberately chosen to
view it out of context. Either way, General Buhari cannot be held responsible
for that.
The ANPP Presidential Candidate who is a former
Head of State himself will not seek to incite the public against a constituted
authority as the President's letter imputes. In all his public service life be
has been known to be disciplined and law abiding. For the purpose of this
election, it is the considered opinion of the Buhari-Okadigbo Presidential
Campaign Organisation that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is simply another candidate
in the race. We have noted that in the conduct of the 2003 elections, the
President who to all intents and purposes is in charge of the election process
has behaved less as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and more as
an interested party in the elections. We have therefore addressed ourselves
appropriately to that fact. The respected views of the Catholic Church in
Nigeria and the several observer groups on the just concluded National Assembly
elections are instructive.
We have noted the threats of the President in his
letter. But the position of the ANPP Presidential Candidate remains unchanged.
He will continue to maintain that Nigerians should promote democracy by
exercising their rights to vote during elections. He will also continue to
insist as he did in the press conference of 17th April, 2003 that the people
should protect their votes with all they have. After all, as the PDP National
Chairman, Mr. Audu Ogbeh once said himself, and we fully agree, "a fraudulent
democracy is worse than a military dictatorship". We are at one with the
President, that he as President has the responsibility for maintaining peace,
law and order. But this responsibility does not in any way vitiate the people's
responsibility or even the right to defend the nation's hard-earned democracy
even against an elected President.
ANPP Deputy Director General Media and Publicity
Abuja
Both Incumbent-President-cum-Candidate General
Olusegun Obasanjo and Candidate General Muhammadu Buhari should keep their level
heads on this matter. Their words and their timings are unnecessarily turning
these our civilian elections into a civil war, and their (ex-)military
militician profiles are capable of unnecessarily calling in present and past
military loyalties.
The issues are pretty clear: One, there should be
no rigging in our future elections, and provenly-rigged
particular elections should be annulled and re-run properly – those are
the primary responsibilities of Dr. Abel Guobadia’s INEC, to which it should be
alive. Two, there should be no threats of bedlam from any side. Three, we have
tomorrow, Saturday April 19, in the Presidential and Gubernatorial Elections, to
begin to turn a new leaf.
Nigeria is bigger than any one of the two
candidates – or even of all the twenty presidential candidates, thirty-six
gubernatorial candidates, one hundred senatorial candidates, three hundred House
of Representatives candidates or three thousand state assemblies candidates.
Participating in elections as candidates should not be a do-or-die affair.
Running minimally-acceptable elections should not be rocket science and
verifying allegations of rigged elections should not be equated to going to the
moon, certainly not for physics professor Guobadia.
Finally, the Nigerian voters are urged to be
vigilant and to more carefully guard their voting rights jealously. Electoral
democracy is all about the wishes of the people being properly determined
through free-and-fair voting, counting and announcing of the actual
majority-votes-getting winners. Those “wishes of the people” cannot, must not
be capriciously determined by mere licked fingers stuck in the wind.
‘Bolaji Aluko
Nigerian Citizen
Burtonsville, Maryland, USA