Ayodele Fayose, the governor of Ekiti State, has described President Muhammadu Buhari’s involvement in meeting President Yahya Jammeh to persuade him to concede defeat as an aberration.
“A man like Buhari under whose free, fair and credible elections no longer exist lacks moral rights to preach obedience to democratic principles to anyone,” Fayose said in an emailed statement to The Trent on Wednesday, December 14, 2016.
The governor said great Africans like former President Goodluck Jonathan, President John Mahama of Ghana and others who have lost elections and conceded defeat were in the best position to intervene in Gambia and not someone like Buhari, who lost election three times and never conceded defeat.
In a statement signed by his media aide, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose wondered what President Buhari,
whose government is desperately moving Nigeria from a multi-party democracy to a one party State, would have told President Jammeh in Gambia on Tuesday.
“With what happened in Rivers State last weekend, it is certain that votes of Nigerians will no longer be allowed to count as the APC cabal in the Presidential villa has now assumed the roles of INEC, allocating votes to their party and using security agents to force their will on the people,” the governor said.
“Did President Buhari face Jammeh and advised him to accept defeat the way he (Buhari) conceded defeat in 2003, 2007 and 2011 when violence was instigated and several people, including Youth Corp members were killed?
Or did Buhari lecture Jammeh to take to democracy at gunpoint, which is now the norm in Nigeria?
“How can Buhari, who has destroyed the legacy of free, fair and credible elections that was handed over to him, be the one to prevail on someone else to adhere to democratic principles?”
He said Buhari should first remove the timber in his eyes before attempting to remove the toothpicks in other peoples’ eyes, describing the president as a physician who cannot heal himself but trying to heal others.
The governor said even though President Jammeh behaved dishonourably by reneging on his initial promise to accept defeat, involvement of President Buhari in the meeting to persuade him to step down was the height of hypocrisy.
The governor said that Nigerians are now more concerned with how to take back their country like the Gambians have done.
“Nigerians are worried about the possibility of Buhari behaving like Jammeh in 2019 after he must have been defeated and that the international community may need a high-powered delegation to pilot his rampaging bull out of Nigerians China shop,” he said.
