YOU DIDN’T WIN, DON’T MISLEAD THE GULLIBLE – APC TELLS PETER OBI

By Oduola Farouq A.

The All Progressive Congress Presidential campaign committee responded to Peter Obi, the Labour Party candidate in the recently concluded presidential election, and said that he shouldn’t deceive Nigerians by claiming that he won the poll and was robbed of the victory.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu presented the certificate of Return to Tinubu in Abuja on Wednesday, after polling 8.8 million votes to defeat Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, LP, who had secured 6.9 million and 6.1 million votes, respectively.

Peter Obi in a press conference on Thursday in Abuja stated that he won the election and he will explore all legal options to reclaim his mandate.

Obi said: “We will explore all legal and peaceful options to reclaim our mandate. We won the election and we will prove it to Nigerians.

“I am challenging the process. This is very unfair. It is the least expected of Nigeria.

Obi’s claims have been refuted by the Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council in a statement signed by FESTUS KEYAMO, SAN, who also serves as its director of public affairs and chief spokesperson. He claims that Obi’s goal is to simply undermine the legitimacy of the mandate freely given to the President-Elect by the majority of Nigerians.

The full statement reads:

“We make this brief statement in reaction to the Press briefing held earlier today by the defeated candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, wherein (in his now well-acknowledged penchant for spewing falsehood) he made the outlandish claim before the world that he won the 2023 Presidential Election, but he was robbed of the victory.

“Having been officially declared winner of the 2023 Presidential Election by the Independent National Electoral Commission and having received his Certificate of Return (along with his Vice-President Elect), the President-Elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would have ignored this continuous false claims being peddled by Mr. Peter Obi and his supporters. But we recognise his motive of doing this is to simply delegitimize the mandate freely given to the President-Elect by the majority of Nigerians.

“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. He pretends to play the victim, whereas he is the greatest culprit in this game of brickbats.

“Mr. Peter Obi knows HE COULD NOT HAVE won having played the most divisive religious politics in our history and the pattern of the votes clearly show that; Mr. Obi KNOWS HE COULD NOT HAVE WON having broken out as a fragment of the main opposition, the PDP and all he could hope for was to harvest a portion of the votes of PDP in a section of the country and the results do NOT tell a lie; Mr. Obi knows HE COULD NOT HAVE WON, when he presented himself as a tribal candidate and was only campaigning in settlements of his tribesmen in other States outside the South East instead of appealing to all and sundry; Mr. Obi knows he could not have won having joined the Labour Party few months ago and bought the ticket of the Party without valid Primaries and thereby polarised his party; Mr. Peter Obi KNOWS HE DID NOT WIN because he did not even fulfil the minimum requirement of our constitution which requires a spread of 25 percent in two-thirds of the States of the Federation. He did not even come close. With his divisive rhetorics, he could not have come close.

“It is also ludicrous that Mr. Peter Obi is laying claim to victory along with his new-found partner, the PDP, that is also laying claim to victory. I tweeted this morning, thus: ‘’This is the first time in my entire life that I am seeing people who came 2nd and 3rd in an exam both claiming they took first and then agreeing to protest together to the examiner to record that both of them took first, yet they are not seeing the contradiction in their actions.’’ We stand by that comment.

“The President-Elect, ASIWAJU Bola Ahmed Tinubu has extended a hand of fellowship to his defeated opponents, including Mr. Peter Obi to join hands with him in nation-building.

“Mr. Peter Obi should embrace that hand of fellowship and brotherhood by the President-elect as a committed patriot instead of engaging in this crass grandstanding.”