The president-elect, Mr. Bola Tinubu, has welcomed the decision by the presidential candidates of the Labour Party (LP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Messrs Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar to challenge the outcome of the presidential election held on February 25 in court.
The LP and PDP candidates had, yesterday, in separate press conferences, rejected the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the election which, according to them, was fraught with obvious irregularities and manipulation.
Addressing Obi’s concerns about the election, Tinubu said in a statement issued Thursday in Abuja and signed by the director, media and publicity at the APC presidential campaign council Mr. Bayo Onanuga, debunked the LP candidate’s claim that the presidential election was not free and fair.
Part of the statement reads; “We watched with dismay today’s press conference addressed by the Presidential candidate of Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi where he made very weird and wild claims about the outcome of the just concluded presidential and national assembly elections, an election in which he emerged a second runner up, according to the result declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
“We welcome the decision of Mr. Obi to seek redress in court as an aggrieved party if he is convinced of the evidence of electoral frauds he will present before the tribunal as alleged.
“Going to court is part of the electoral process and it is the most decent, statesmanlike and civilised course of action to take. We salute the decision. It is surely better than calling supporters to the streets and instigating social unrest,” he said.
Tinubu maintained that the 2023 election is one of the most transparent and peaceful elections in the history of Nigeria.
He contended that the process was credible hence it made it possible for Obi’s LP to record over six million votes it got contrary to the pre-election forecast.
“That Labour Party and Mr. Obi surprised bookmakers by winning in Lagos State, Nasarawa, Plateau, Delta and Edo where there are sitting governors of either the All Progressives Congress or the Peoples Democratic Party. Those governors have entrenched political machinery. That Obi won attests to the credibility of the election process. In those states, most of the sitting governors contested election to go to the Senate and lost to little-known candidates of the Labour Party.
“The Labour Party also swept the entire five South East states under the control of either APGA, PDP or APC.
“We believe that the Labour Party Presidential Candidate contradicted himself and exposed himself to public ridicule by suggesting that the election was only credible in states and places his party won.
“We need us to forewarn Mr. Obi, that when he gets to court he should be prepared to tell the world how his party won over 90% of votes in his region of South East while other parties got almost nothing. We have evidence of voter suppression, intimidation and harassment in the South East especially of those who came out to vote for our party.
“Also when Mr. Obi gets to court, he will have to convince the court with his allegation of rigging in over 40,000 polling units across the country, especially in northwest and northeast where his party had no party agents and did not sign results sheets as required by law. It is our assumption that the Labour Party will enlist PDP agents to prove its fraud claims since it is an affiliate of PDP,” he added.
The president-elect also stated that Obi did not win and could not have won the election because his politicking had ethno-religious approach.
Besides, he said Obi was heavily relying on the youth population to win, forgetting that Nigeria does not have a homogeneous and monolithic youth population that can deliver bloc vote to any candidate.
“We want to state again for the umpteenth time that Mr. Obi didn’t win the presidential election and could not have won under any circumstances. This is because he had no path to winning a national election in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society like Nigeria where a candidate running in a national election must appeal to the cross-section of our pluralistic society.
“Mr. Obi anchored his presidential campaign on the failed strategy of ethnicity and religion, the divisive and dangerous politics that has hobbled the progress of our country for decades.
“Nigerians simply rejected an ethnic and religious bigot through their ballots.
“Mr. Obi all through his campaign presented himself as the candidate of the Christians and the Church, who wanted to help ‘take back their country” from the Nigerian Muslims.
“His campaign also ran on the engine of ethnicity, inflaming strong Igbo sentiments. He also sought to cash in on the supposed youth discontent in Nigeria, as fuelled by the ENDSARS protest in 2020.
“While Labour Party positioned its candidate as the harvester of the youth votes, its planners forgot that Nigeria does not have a homogeneous and monolithic youth population that can deliver bloc vote to any candidate.
“All the major parties that contested the election also have strong youth appeal and supporters.
“The lesson in Mr. Obi’s defeat in the election is that no politician in Nigeria can win a presidential race by being a sectional and an anointed candidate of any religion.
“Mr. Obi and his party knew why they failed. They knew they had no path to victory with their negative and dangerous campaign.
“We owe Labour Party and Peter Obi the blunt truth: They failed in the election. No amount of red-herring and misinformation about the election and the outcome can obliterate this reality,” Tinubu added.
In the case of the concerns raised by the PDP presidential candidate, Tinubu reaction was full of bile and insult.
“Atiku Abubakar’s decision to challenge the outcome of the results is welcome. We are prepared to meet his challenge, no matter the nature of the challenge, anywhere and anytime,” he said.
The president-elect who spoke through the PCC spokesman, Mr. Festus Keyamo, said Atiku was the architect his own misfortune.
He said Atiku’s defeat was self-inflicted for he failed to put his house in order after emerging the standard bearer of the PDP in the primary.
“In the typical fashion of the last kick of a dying horse, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar this evening addressed the Press and claimed that the 2023 Presidential Election was neither free nor fair. He made this bogus claim without providing a shred of evidence, except to trumpet the noise made by his supporters on social media. He also went ahead to make unfounded derogatory comments about the person of the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in obvious bitterness and frustration.
“Alhaji Atiku Abubakar should be thankful that he even exceeded expectations in the elections by coming 2nd; with all the distractions and fractured party with which he campaigned he must have sensed beforehand that he was headed for a humiliating defeat that should have put him a distant 3rd or 4th in the elections. His performance was therefore the best he could achieve.
“If Atiku Abubakar is not embracing the olive branch extended to him and other losers in the 2023 elections by the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the least he can do is to quietly relocate to Dubai which has become his traditional home base,” he said.
Tinubu noted that Atiku breached the zoning principle within his own party by insisting on running for President when that was clearly against the mood of the nation.
He said even after emerging as a candidate, the PDP itself continued to rub insult on the faces of southern leaders in the Party by insisting on keeping the position of national chairman in the north.
“This obviously led to the rebellion of the G5 Governors and their subsequent sabotage of the PDP before the polls and at the polls by campaigning against Atiku’s candidature. His failure to unite his party and manage this post-primaries fall-out was his eventual undoing”, said Tinubu.
He said Atiku’s bid for presidency in 2023 was dead on arrival “when his inordinate ambition fractured his party into three parts, with Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso and Mr. Peter Obi breaking away to the New Nigeria Peoples Party NNPP and the Labour Party respectively”.
“The massive loss he suffered in traditional PDP zones and states is a clear testament to this. One wonders, then, how he expected to have won the election. It is also comical to see that he claims victory at the polls together with Mr. Peter Obi with whom his party has been holding press conferences.
“Nigerians have since seen through the ambition of Atiku Abubakar that it is merely self-serving. Hence, he has run for Presidency at every point in time in the last 30 years, irrespective of the zoning tilt of the nation.
Following his successive failures and rejection by Nigerians in different elections, it should be clear to him by now that he is simply unelectable,” he added.
