Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s Vice President on Thursday said that violating the rights of electorates to free choice, undermines democracy
The Vice President who was speaking at the posthumous 72nd birthday of Abiola Ajumobi, former Oyo state Governor, in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital, noted that democracy remains the best system of establishing governments because it guarantees respect for the fundamental rights of individuals to choose their leaders.
Speaking on the theme of the Roundtable, Election Security and Good Governance in Nigeria, the VP noted that democracy as a “ system of government guarantees the accountability of the elected to the electorate. As the electorate determines in every electoral cycle by their free choice whether the mandate given was properly utilized.”
Referencing the timeless quote by the late US President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address in 1863, Osinbajo submitted that “man has not yet developed a fairer and more just system of establishing governments than that the government is a government of the people by the people for the people.”
“This right of choice of leaders as given by democracy is not just a fundamental civil and political right, but it also separates man from animals for whom might confers the right to leadership,”
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In an apparent reference to the ongoing debate over the 2021 Electoral Bill recently passed into law by the National Assembly and which is yet to be signed by President Muhammadu Buhari, Osinbajo said “the major issue, therefore, is how to ensure that right of free choice is not defeated or corrupted. Once that right of free choice is violated, the basis of democracy and its product, good governance, is undermined.”
“I am sure some of the conversation today will look at this fundamental point…how can we protect the vote, how do we ensure that every vote counts; how do we protect the government of the people, by the people, and for the people; and ensure, as Lincoln famously prayed at Gettysburg, that it does not perish from the earth?”
Recall that Senate President Ahmad Lawan, speaking on the inclusion of section 82 which allows for direct primaries in conducting elections into all elective offices, said “the National Assembly was returning powers to the people” through the direct primaries
The inclusion of direct primaries was however rejected by all the All Progressive Congress Governors, arguing that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) may not have the capacity to conduct direct primaries.
This position was rejected by INEC, insisting that it has the capabilities to conduct the direct primaries.
Osinbajo described the late governor Ajimobi as “an exceptional communicator and a natural bridge builder, who attained early success in the oil and gas industry, and then emerged as an astute politician, Senator of the Federal Republic, and two-term governor of Oyo State.”
He added that the late Abiola Ajimobi was “a remarkable human being, an extraordinarily gifted man, astute politician, accomplished public intellectual and administrator in his own right.”
The Vice President also commissioned the Abiola Ajimobi Resource Center built by the Senator Abiola Ajimobi Foundation at the Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies (IPSS), University of Ibadan, Oyo State.
