How We Lost Election Because I Rejected Offer To Bribe INEC – Obasanjo

How We Lost Election Because I Rejected Offer To Bribe INEC – Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has recounted how his former political party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), faced defeat in a local government election in Ogun State in 1998. He attributed this loss to his refusal to endorse plans to bribe officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Speaking in Abeokuta during a high-level consultation he organized on ‘Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy in Africa,’ Obasanjo shared that party leaders had proposed allocating funds for the police and INEC.

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However, he rejected the proposal, reasoning that INEC officials and policemen are government employees who receive monthly salaries.

Addressing politicians and professors at the debate, Obasanjo expressed discomfort with the phrase ‘Nigerian factor’ commonly used in discussions about democracy and other developmental issues.

He recounted encountering this term during the first local government election in the nation when his party suffered defeat because he refused to accommodate the so-called ‘Nigerian factor’ in the election planning.

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Obasanjo said: “When things go wrong, you said the Nigerian factor. The first thing I learnt in politics was this thing I called Nigerian factor. In 1998, we had the first local government election. We had parties, and here in Abeokuta, we met in my office and they came up and said, ‘look, this is money for INEC, money for police.’ At a stage I said, ‘what nonsense! Is police not being paid, and INEC too?’

“They said ‘that’s how we do it. I said ‘you cannot do that.’ So, they didn’t do that. And of course, we lost all the local governments. We lost all. And then they came to me and said, ‘Baba, you see? If you had allowed us to do it the way we used to do it, we would have won’. And I felt guilty.

“During the next election which was State Assembly, I just stayed in my house. I said ‘well, do whatever you want to do, I will not be part of it’. So, I didn’t even go. But, the result was the same. One of the people who got money didn’t even distribute it to where he was supposed to distribute it.”

While saying it is time to be realistic, the former President said a hungry will sell his vote for just N1000.

“When you are hungry, whatever anybody tells you cannot go in. Poverty is a great enemy of democracy. Ignorance or lack of education is a great enemy of democracy. And we seem to be deliberately fomenting poverty and lack of education,” Obasanjo said.

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