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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, Peter Obi, said they will seek redress in court over the outcome of last Saturday’s presidential election.
They both spoke after the declaration of the All Progressives Congress candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as the president-elect on Wednesday.
Atiku described Tinubu’s victory as “a grave injustice which will not stand.”
The spokesperson and Director, Public Affairs of the PDP Presidential Campaign Committee, Sen Dino Melaye, in a statement on Wednesday evening, said there will be no going back on the battle to retrieve the mandate, which he described as a “stolen one.”
“A clarion call on all Atiku’s supporters all over the world not to be perturbed. Weeping may tarry till night but joy cometh in the morning.
“This grave injustice shall not stand. The battle to retrieve our stolen mandate is a battle of no retreat, no surrender. We shall overcome,” he said.
We’ll contest defeat through legal means – Obi
Obi on the other hand, has said he would contest Tinubu’s victory through legal and peaceful means.
He said this on Wednesday in Abuja at a press conference addressed by his running mate, Senator Datti Baba-Ahmed.
“On behalf of our presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, I address you all and indeed all Nigerians on the current situation in the country following the announcement of the purported result of the presidential election held on Saturday, February 25th, 2023.
“Please be assured of our determination to fight the injustice that has been perpetrated on Nigerians through all legal and peaceful means. It is our position that the purported result did not meet the minimum criteria of a transparent, free and fair election,” Baba-Ahmed said.
He, however, thanked all Nigerians for believing in them and for coming out en masse to vote for the Labour Party and for the cause they believed in, which he said was the birth of a new Nigeria.
Cancel presidential poll—NNPP
At a press conference yesterday, the National Chairman of New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Rufai Alkali, said with the way it conducted the election, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had taken the country back to the pre-2015 era.
“We are deeply concerned that going by what had happened on election day, the election umpire has taken our country back to the pre-2015 era of election where everything goes, where voters were deliberately and systematically disenfranchised, where ballot box snatching and ballot box stuffing was the norm, where voter suppression was widespread; where violence and vote-buying were the main deciding factors of the outcome of elections, where security agents openly take side with the ruling party and participate actively in rigging elections,” he said.
Alkali said his party observed that “INEC deliberately undermined the NNPP in the process, allowed campaign on election day by the president and others, voter suppression, vote-buying, BVAS failure and over-voting, lying about IReV sever and election marred by unprecedented violence.”
He, therefore, demanded the cancellation of the election.