A former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, has warned that if preventive measures were not taken, the prediction on the disintegration of Nigeria will come to pass.
The former INEC boss said this on Wednesday in Abuja in a keynote address at a conference on ‘20 Years of Democracy’ organised by TELL magazine.
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“The CIA thought that 2015 was the do-or-die period for Nigeria, that there would not be a Nigeria in the way you know after the 2015 General Elections. That has come and passed but I think if we do not take care, a lot of these predictions will come to pass.
“That is why we need to do quite a lot, much more than we have ever done in order to protect the integrity of the electoral process before 2023,” Jega said.
He observed that the drop in registered voters from 1999 shows loss of trust and confidence in the electoral process.
National chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, took a swipe at former President Olusegun Obasanjo, calling him a tribalist.
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“It is unfortunate that a man in his 80s will say Nigeria may break up. Why do you want Nigeria to break up? Don’t you want your children to enjoy it? These are people who dismantled the regions, created additional states and gave us the current structure. Now, they are calling for restructuring. Who gave us the present structure? We must be careful of these tribalists, who cannot win elections in their own localities,” he said.
Standing in defence of Obasanjo, Editor-in-Chief of TELL magazine, Nosa Igiebor, said: “You can accuse Olusegun Obasanjo of anything but one thing you can’t say of him is that he is a tribalist. He is not an ethnic jingoist.”
