Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC PCC) yesterday clashed over the former’s call for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to cancel the results of the presidential and National Assembly elections held on Saturday.
Obasanjo alleged that the election was disrupted in many areas, saying tension ‘is building up’ over the outcome of the election.
He particularly asked the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, to save Nigeria from the looming danger and disaster waiting to happen.
He said this in a statement titled, “2023 Nigeria Presidential Election: An Appeal for Caution and Rectification.”
Tinubu defeats Obi at Obasanjo’s polling unit
Obi defeats Tinubu, Atiku in Cross River
Obasanjo alleged that INEC officials had been compromised by the manual transmission of results which he said had been manipulated and doctored.
During the Saturday presidential election, Obasanjo failed to deliver his polling unit in Abeokuta, Ogun State, for his preferred Labour Party’s Peter Obi as the APC’s Bola Tinubu won at the unit.
The former Head of State urged President Muhammadu Buhari to insist on leaving a legacy of free, fair and credible elections.
Obasanjo’s call is a coup – APC
But reacting, the Director of Public Affairs and spokesman of the APC Presidential Campaign Council (APC-PCC), Festus Keyamo (SAN), told our correspondent that the former president had no integrity to speak on the matter.
He said, “He (Obasanjo) has no integrity to speak on the matter because his candidate lost. He was partisan.”
Also in a statement, the Special Adviser on Media, Communications and Public Affairs of APC PCC, Dele Alake, accused Obasanjo of mischief and hypocrisy, describing his call as a coup against democracy.
He stated that the former Head of States call was based on “frivolous, unfounded and baseless allegations by politicians who are sore losers and have no respect for democratic values.”
Alake said it was tragic that a former president who ought to be a statesman in comportment and speech would recklessly seek to endanger and derail a democratic process for utterly selfish, egoistic and malicious reasons.
He reminded Nigerians that Obasanjo was not an impartial and disinterested party because he had endorsed Obi in his January 1 letter where he asked the youth to vote en masse for him.
“As fate would have it, Peter Obi was defeated even in Obasanjo’s own polling unit in Abeokuta in Ogun State. But it is now obvious that the only election Obasanjo will agree to be free, fair and credible is one that produces Obi as winner which is ridiculous.
“Is Obasanjo also querying the outcome of the presidential elections in Lagos or Delta where Obi won? If the outcome in Lagos won by Obi is free and credible, on what basis is he querying the outcome of the elections in other places? This is pure mischief and sheer hypocrisy.
“Obasanjo wants President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene in an undemocratic manner to truncate the ongoing political process just the way he did most shamelessness in the 2003 and 2007 elections widely described as the worst in our political history.
“Luckily, President Buhari is made of finer and more principled democratic stuff. He will not allow Obasanjo to lure him into tainting his democratic credentials in this regard.
“This is an election in which Asiwaju Tinubu, for instance, has lost in Lagos State in his South West region while Atiku and Obi have also won elections outside their own regional bases. No true democrat must seek an abortion of the process just because he believes the elections are not going his way.”
APC PCC added, “Nigerians must reject Obasanjo’s dubious and hypocritical advice and stay strictly and firmly on the path of constitutionalism and democratic due process.”
PDP rejects results, asks INEC to stop collation
Also, the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has rejected the ongoing collation and announcement of the results of the election, saying the whole process is illegal and unacceptable.
Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters Monday evening in Abuja, the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Debo Ologunagba, said for failing to upload the results of the Saturday election online in real-time as stipulated by the Electoral Act, the ongoing collation exercise had become illegal.
The party which warned that INEC was pushing Nigerians to the wall added that from the votes across the country, its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, substantially defeated Tinubu.
The PDP accused INEC of aiding and abetting the rigging and manipulation of the election results in favour of the APC by refusing and neglecting to transmit directly the results of the elections from the Polling Unit to the INEC Server/Website as required by law.
Citing section 60 (4) of the Electoral Act 2022, the party stated that any result announced by INEC is “ultra vires, illegal, and of no consequence unless they are results already transmitted directly from the polling units.
PDP also accused INEC of illegal cancellation of election results in many states of the country, adding that in Sokoto State “over 200 polling units results where the PDP is in clear lead have also been canceled thereby disenfranchising over 200,000 registered voters.”
By Kamarudeen Ogundele, Saawua Terzungwe, Baba Martins (Abuja) & Peter Moses (Abeokuta)
