Bestselling author and former presidential aide, Reno Omokri, has hit out at the Nigerian president, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu over his reaction to the European Union’s report on the last general elections.
Recall that the president has rejected the unfavourable report, saying he had many reasons to believe the “jaundiced report”, based on the views of fewer than 50 observers “was to merely sustain the same premature denunciatory stance contained in EU’s preliminary report released in March.”
But according to Omokri, Tinubu should have accepted the report by playing the bigger man. He wrote:
The EU Election Observer Mission’s report was not so damning. President Bola Tinubu missed a big opportunity. He should have done what President Yar’adua did and accepted that the elections which brought him to power were not perfect (even in America, elections are not perfect) and promised to improve future elections by giving the INEC more independence.
If he had done that, he would have been the bigger man. But this knee-jerk reaction made him look small. And what did the EU-EOM say that was so bad? They did not cast doubt on his victory. They merely pointed out lapses on the part of INEC, especially their recruitment process and the integrity of their technology. The INEC itself has not even devised what the EU-EOM said, most likely because it is true.
I think the President did not handle this as best he could. A simple, ‘I hear you, and though I do not completely agree, I will nonetheless take your observations into account’, would have been a diplomatic response that would have satisfied everybody.
Am I lying, people?
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator and a recipient of the D9112 Superstar Icon Award, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
