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Former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has said that President Faure Gnassingbe of Togo has nothing new to offer after spending 12 years in office.
The former Nigerian leader who is a regular election observer on the continent especially for the Commonwealth, is reacting to the recent political uprisings in the West African country.
TheNewsGuru.com reports that citizens have embarked on several protests to demand President Gnassingbe’s resignation.
“I believe whatever he (Faure Gnassingbe) has to do in terms of development, whatever ideas he has, he must have exhausted them by now, unless he has something new that we do not know,” Obasanjo said.
He also adds that it is important that the Togolese leader takes concrete action on the anti-government protests that has rocked the country. “I believe that President Faure Gnassingbe will have to do something about it,” Obasanjo told the BBC Africa service on Friday.
On the question of whether the 52-year-old should step down as demanded by protesters, Obasanjo said, “I believe he should have a new constitution that will have limits to the number of terms that anybody can be president and he should abide by that”.
TheNewsGuru.com reports that Faure was a minister until 12 years ago when his father Eyadema died after 38 years in office. Forty years at the time, the army swore him in as president to the anger of the international community. The laws demanded that the speaker of parliament takes over after a president’s death.
He stepped down and was fielded as a candidate in 2005 polls which he won after deadly opposition protests. He has since won two other contested polls – 2010 and 2015. Two-term limits were scrapped year ago allowing him to stay on.
Even though his current mandate runs till 2020, the main opposition demand is that he steps down immediately or faces more protests in the coming days. A new proposal has been tabled to cater for the protesters demands but they have dismissed it as a ploy for Faure to buy time and hang on.
Obasanjo and the then ECOWAS secretary-general, Mohammed Ibn Chambas of Ghana, were key players in finding a solution to the political crisis of 2005. Incidentally, the current ECOWAS chairman is Faure Gnassingbe – he took over from Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf this year.