BY FOLASHADE KEHINDE
IMMEDIATE-PAST National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Adams Oshiomhole, has disclosed why the Nigeria Labour Congress opposed a planned impeachment of former President Olusegun Obasanjo despite his constant criticism of his administration.
He said he decided to oppose the National Assembly with respect to that move because of the need to separate the person, Obasanjo, from the President of Nigeria as well as the need to protect Nigeria’s young democracy at the time.
Oshiomhole, who is a former Governor of Edo State, spoke when he received the leadership of Law Students Association of Nigeria, led by its president, Blessing Agbonmhere, at the weekend.
He said, “We said to impeach the president at this time when our democracy was just growing would tantamount to short-circuiting the process. No short cut. Obasanjo was PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) and I was Labour.
“He neutralised the opposition but I can say the organised labour was the main opposition and I said even as we fought him and would continue to fight him on those policy issues, we must make a decision between the person, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and the president of Nigeria.”
Oshiomhole noted that he had been a beneficiary of the rule of law, adding that without a courageous judiciary, he would have been an ex-convict.
“I always say that I have been a beneficiary of very courageous judiciary and for a courageous judiciary, I would have been a convict because in the course of my work as a trade union leader, when I stepped on government’s redline, of course they deployed all the weapons including the police, had me arrested countless times, arraigned before magistrates and high court for all kinds of charges, including unlawful assembly, incitement and all the things you can think of. But each time they did that, I have been fortunate to appear before judges with courage,” he said.
“I have been defended by lawyers, who most of the time provided their knowledge of the law and intellectual sagacity to defend me from government after government whether it was military and later civilian. I cannot count how many times I was prosecuted and even persecuted,” the former governor added.
Recalling specific cases, Oshiomhole stated, “Perhaps the most outstanding which most Nigerians will readily remember was the fact that I was rigged out of election in Edo State when I contested for Governorship in 2007.
“Thanks to a very courageous judiciary and the industry of very learned senior members of the bar, not only was the fact of rigging established before the court and at the appeal level, I think, I am in history as the only person who has been rigged out of election, and courtesy of a courageous judiciary, I was declared the winner and INEC was ordered to swear me in rather than simply cancelling the election and asking me to go and repeat for an examination I did not fail but because somebody else did not do his part.”
On Obasanjo, he explained, “When I was president of the NLC, nobody fought President Obasanjo like I did, providing leadership for Nigerian workers and Nigerian working families who were negatively affected by the choice of economic policies that the then president pursued.
“The president having just retired or being a former military head of state may not have known the difference between being a head of state and being an elected president and I am proud to say that it was my lot to provide leadership for constructive engagements and to legally challenge him and using the democratic space to interrogate his actions and get him to recognise that we were now to be ruled by our consent not by decrees anymore and if you think anybody had done anything wrong, all you could do as president was to go to court, that he no longer had the powers to put me away the way he was able to do when he was military head of state.”
“It was a challenge to get him to go through some kind of reorientation and the rest is history,” the former Labour leader recalled.
