The Peoples Democratic Party suffers from selective amnesia by its claim that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, national leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria, endorsed the election that resulted in Goodluck Jonathan’s emergence as president as free and fair.
Reacting to Olisa Metuh, the PDP National Publicity Secretary’s claim that Tinubu endorsed President Jonathan’s election at a lecture he gave at Chatham House in London, Sunday Dare, Tinubu’s special adviser on Media, accused the PDP of wilful mischief, as Tinubu’s statement was “deliberately” quoted out of context.
Mr. Metuh was reacting to the ACN support for Gen. Muhammadu Buhari’s warning that dire consequences awaited the polity if elections were rigged in 2015.
But putting the records straight, Dare insisted that though Tinubu said he thought Jonathan won the election, his tally was exaggerated, thus casting a slur on the integrity of his victory.
Tinubu in that lecture on July 18, 2011 had declared: “I believe Jonathan won the election but that the returns attributed to him in some parts of the country obviously appeared exaggerated. Thus, celebrating the election as free and fair might lead to INEC beating its chest and might short-circuit the process of fundamental electoral reform. We must not relent in our struggle for fundamental reforms.”
In the same speech, Asiwaju Tinubu had warned about the danger of draping the 2011 elections in qualities they did not deserve, adding that such false hope could come back to haunt Nigeria if future elections were not improved upon, saying that by then, the damage might even be beyond the judiciary to fix.
He added: “The negative consequence of this inflated measure is that the bar has been set too low for the conduct of subsequent elections. Those in power now believe they will not have to improve the process. This would be a gross miscalculation of the public mood. Should subsequent elections be of the same uneven quality, I fear a backlash that cannot simply be contained by resort to the judiciary for resolution.”
Dare wondered how all these were different from what Gen. Buhari said, and how a party out of touch with reality and just throwing political tantrums, could claim Tinubu’s analysis of the 2011 elections amounted to endorsing Jonathan’s election.
On the so-called international observers’ endorsement, Tinubu had warned in the same speech that such endorsement was hasty, misleading and did not represent the true picture of the situation.
He said: “The 2011 elections were not of the high quality the government and many international observers proclaimed. In a way, international observers have done Nigeria a disservice that will become apparent in the future. The observers did not see what took place before Election Day or what happened in rural Nigeria. More importantly, most observers ended their day as the sun set and the polling stations closed,”Tinubu had said. “They ended their watch just as the agents of malpractice would begin their craft. Observers made a broad final conclusion based on a thin filament of information. They judged a complicated play solely by viewing one of its several acts.”
Dare cautioned PDP against muddling up facts for political mischief and counselled it to devote more time to reading the full Chatham House speech, instead of quoting it out of context to confuse and confound unsuspecting Nigerians.
But more importantly, he added, the federal ruling party should address the challenge Gen. Buhari has thrown: organise a free, fair and transparent election and everything would be well. But try and skew the vote, and face sure disaster.