PDP lost 1998 LG election in Ogun because I refused to bribe INEC, Police — Obasanjo
Nigeria’s former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, said his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), lost the 1998 local government election in Ogun State because he vehemently rejected plans to bribe officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the police. He recalled this while speaking at a high-level consultation he organised on ‘Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy in Africa’, held on Monday in Abeokuta. The former president said he rejected the proposal on the belief that INEC officials and policemen are government workers earning salaries monthly Obasanjo said he was not an advocate of the slang “Nigerian Factor”, hence his refusal to subscribe to bribing the police and INEC officials. He said, “When things go wrong, you blame 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 the