Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Peter Obi, the presidential candidates of the Labour Party (LP), are insisting they won the polls two months after the 2023 presidential election....CONTINUE READING
The ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, is also in the media tattling out counterclaims on the outcome of the polls as the president-elect, Bola Tinubu is set to be inaugurated as Nigeria’s new leader on the 29th of May…..CONTINUE READING
These controversies are viewed as troubling considering that the cases are subjects of litigation.
Tinubu’s two challengers Atiku and Obi are not giving up on their claims that they and not the announced winner won the election.
A few days ago, President Muhammadu Buhari said the opposition lost the election owing to overconfidence.
He was quoted as saying: “They were already telling their foreign backers that they would defeat the APC. Our Party blended confidence with caution, we worked hard and won. Now, their overconfidence is creating more problems for the opposition than anyone else. They are finding it hard to convince those who supported them from outside why they are unable to beat us.
“A combination of over confidence, complacency and bad tactical moves made them lose, plain and clear. This has created more problems in their camp. Why did they fail to remove us?”
Also, Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, told the opposition to stop their endless groping over the last election because they lost woefully.
However, the PDP has fired back, insisting that Atiku won the election.
Debo Ologunagba, the National Publicity Secretary of the opposition party, claimed that the polling units showed that Atiku won the presidential election, but the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), announced Tinubu as winner.
“The PDP insists that its candidate, Atiku, clearly won the February 25, 2023 Presidential election, as shown from the actual votes cast at the Polling Units across the country”, he said.
“The PDP describes the sub judice claims by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, that the opposition lost the election, as yet another in the series of attempts by the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Executive to bully and blackmail the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal”, he added.
He further claimed that the citizens of Nigeria can see through authentic results obtained from the polling units that Atiku Abubakar and not the APC candidate met all the conditions stipulated for the winning of the Presidential election.
Peter Obi of the Labour Party also used the opportunity of a stakeholders’ meeting of the party to maintain his stand that he was the winner of the election and would use every available legal means to recover his alleged stolen mandate.
However, the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal is expected to resume hearing of all the cases filed by the different political parties.
Five political parties are before the Tribunal seeking to invalidate Tinubu’s victory. They include the PDP, the LP, the Allied People’s Movement, the Action Alliance and the Action People’s Party.
Barr Olu Omotayo, a legal luminary, states that the action of the politicians after the presidential election is very strange.
He says, “It is unfortunate and because of the weak institution, the court is not as active as in those days; if not, the office of the CJN would have been able to say something about it and warned them.
He added that “The office of the CJN would have directed the political parties to stop all those things since their matter is in court. But the courts are not saying anything. The CJN who is supposed to be the protector of the courts is not taking action on this…..CONTINUE READING
