Liberia: Fayose blows hot over UN’s choice of Obasanjo as mediator

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose, has congratulated the newly elected President of Liberia, George Opong Weah, describing him as someone destined by God to be president.
The governor, however, described the United Nations’ (UN) choice of Obasanjo as a mediator in Liberia as misplaced, pointed out that “Someone like Obasanjo, who was at the center of the manipulation of George Weah’s electoral victory 12 years ago should not be the one to mediate now that he (Weah) has secured the victory that he was denied then.”

Speaking through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Fayose urged the All Progressives Congress (APC) led federal government and particularly the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to learn from what happened in Liberia and allow the will of the people to prevail in 2018 and 2019 elections.
He said “the emergence of George Weah as Liberia President 12 years after he was short-changed by those who wielded power at that time is a further confirmation that that there is no God in man.”
Fayose called on the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, to withdraw the nomination of Obasanjo as a mediator in Liberia, noting that; “Obasanjo, who was a major actor in the Liberia 2005 election crisis, lacks moral rights to be a mediator in the affairs of that country now that it had the first peaceful transfer of power from one democratically-elected leader to another in more than 70 years.”
“He will rather compound the problems in Liberia because I don’t see him being trusted by the President-Elect, whom he (Obasanjo) openly worked against in 2005 to impose the outgoing President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf for reasons best known to him.

“The UN should be mindful of the fact that someone like Obasanjo that may be seen as celebrity and champion of democracy internationally is actually a bad and decayed element, lacking democratic credential here in Nigeria, considering his failed third term agenda,” he said.
The governor told leaders of Africa, especially the democrats among them to always avoid leaders like Obasanjo with questionable antecedents, saying “he is the actual confusion in the continent.”