He revealed this on Monday in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital 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.
He told participants which include politicians and professors at the debate that he is not always comfortable with the phrase, ‘Nigerian factor’ when discussing democracy and other issues affecting developments in the country.
The former president said he came across the ‘Nigerian factor’ slang when the nation held the first local government election and his party lost because politicians 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 learned in politics was this thing I 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! Are police not being paid, and INEC too?” he said.
“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 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.
Obasanjo also stated that that the Western liberal democracy being practised in Africa has not really taken human nature and the African situation into full account.
“Western Liberal Democracy has not been a system of government in Africa because it was “forced” on the continent by the colonialists”.
