How we lost election in 1998 for not bribing police, INEC officials — Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has narrated how the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost a local government election in Ogun State because he rejected plans to bribe the police and personnel of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The ex-military head of state spoke in Abeokuta on Monday at a high-level consultation he organised on ‘Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy in Africa’.

Obasanjo said party leaders had told him that there should be money allocated for the police and INEC, saying he rejected the proposal on the belief that INEC officials and policemen are government workers earning salaries monthly.

According to him, he came across the ‘Nigerian factor’ slang when the nation held the first local government election and his party lost because politicians said be refused to take cognisance of the Nigerian factor while planning for the election.

“When things go wrong, you said the Nigerian factor. The first thing I learnt in politics was this thing called the 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 the 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 the 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,” Obasanjo recounted.