In a rapid reply to the accusations by Peter Obi, the Director of Media and Publicity for the APC presidential campaign council, Bayo Onanuga, said the president-elect was ready to meet the LP standard bearer provided he had real proof to show he won the poll.
Responding in a statement headlined, ‘We shall meet Mr Peter Obi in court,’ Onanuga added that in an election where Obi came third, he found his charge of fraud ‘very weird.’
He still added that the LP candidate, like any Nigerian, was allowed to seek redress in court if he was satisfied his team had proof of the electoral fraud to put before the tribunal.
He added, “We appreciate the choice of Mr Obi to seek redress in court as an aggrieved party if he is satisfied with the evidence of electoral irregularities he would put before the tribunal as indicated.
“Going to court is part of the election process and it is the most respectable, statesmanlike and civilised course of action to adopt. We admire the choice. That is undoubtedly better than summoning supporters to the streets and creating societal upheaval.
“Before Mr Obi goes to court, we think it important to question certain particular statements in his press speech. Contrary to his declaration, it is not true that the election conducted on February 25 was not free and fair.”
According to him, the 2023 election was one of the most transparent and peaceful elections in the history of the nation.
Continuing, the APC PCC media director observed that Obi’s Labour Party was able to record over six million votes contrary to the pre-election estimate due to the credible electoral process.
Onanuga also noted that the former Anambra governor and his party also stunned bookies by winning in strongholds such as Lagos, Nasarawa, Plateau, Delta and Edo states where there were current governors of the APC or the PDP.
While saying that the affected governors had established political apparatus, the former Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria noted that Obi’s win in those areas also testified to the authenticity of the voting process.
“In those states, most of the incumbent governors fought elections to go to the Senate and lost to little-known candidates of the Labour Party. The Labour Party also swept the whole five South-East states under the authority of APGA, PDP or APC.
“We feel that the Labour Party presidential candidate contradicted himself and exposed himself to public ridicule by stating that the election was only credible in states and localities his party won.
‘’We need to forewarn Mr Obi, that when he comes to court he should be prepared to tell the world how his party won over 90 per cent of votes in his area of South-East while other parties received nearly nothing. We have proof of voter suppression, intimidation and harassment in the South-East, particularly among those who turned out to vote for our party.
“Also when Obi comes to court, he would have to satisfy the court with his accusation of rigging in over 40,000 polling units throughout the nation, notably in North-West and North-East where his party had no party agents and did not sign result sheets as required by law. We expect that Labour Party would employ the PDP operatives to establish its fraud charges as it is an affiliate of PDP.’’
“We want to emphasize again for the umpteenth time that Mr Obi didn’t win the presidential election and could not have won under any circumstances. Obi centred his presidential campaign on the failing approach of ethnicity and religion, the divisive and destructive politics that has hampered the advancement of our nation for decades.
Obi’s controversial Campaign
“His campaign also operated on the engine of ethnicity, inflaming strong Igbo feelings. He also wanted to cash in on the claimed young unrest in Nigeria, as inspired by the #EnDSARS movement in 2020.
‘’The lesson of Mr Obi’s failure in the election is that no politician in Nigeria can win a presidential contest by being a sectional and an anointed candidate of any religion,” he added.
The Chief Spokesperson for APC PCC, Festus Keyamo equally urged the LP candidate to avoid playing the victim.
Reacting to Obi’s assertion that he was robbed of his mandate, Keyamo challenged his reasoning, stating that there is proof revealing how his followers participated in thuggery, violence and plain fabrication of numbers.
The senior lawyer remarked, “He tries to play the victim, although he is the largest criminal in this game of brickbats. Mr Peter Obi is always quick to cite some isolated incidents of irregularities outside his strongholds that could not have substantially affected the outcome of the results in those areas, whereas he deliberately fails to comment on tons and tons of evidence circulating everywhere wherein his supporters in his strongholds engaged in thuggery, hooliganism, violence and outright falsification of figures against our party and our supporters.
“Obi knows he could not have won, having played the most divisive religious politics in our history and the pattern of the ballots demonstrates that. Obi knows he could not have won having broken away as a splinter of the major opposition, the PDP and all he could aspire for was to harvest a percentage of the votes of the PDP in a sector of the nation and the results do not tell a lie.
‘’Mr Obi knows he could not have won when he positioned himself as a tribal candidate and was only campaigning in settlements of his tribesmen in other states beyond the South-East instead of appealing to all and sundry.’’
