Obi criticizes INEC for supporting Tinubu while Atiku declares victory.

Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party’s nominee for president, claims that since he started running for office in 1993, he has done so without encountering any problem, in contrast to Bola Tinubu, the APC nominee, who is dealing with alleged drug and identity crises.

This was said by Atiku in response to Tinubu and the APC’s preliminary opposition to Atiku’s petition disputing Tinubu’s declaration as the victor of the February 25 presidential election.

According to the Independent National Electoral Commission, Tinubu received 8,794,726 votes to win the election.

The commission announced that Peter Obi of the Labour Party received 6,101,533 votes, placing him second behind Atiku, who received 6,984,520 votes.

However, Atiku, Obi, and a few other parties disapproved of the INEC’s results and petitioned the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja to declare the election invalid.

Atiku’s plea had prompted Tinubu to call the former vice president of Nigeria a “serial loser,” saying that he had been attempting unsuccessfully to win the presidency since 1993.

But Atiku said that there was no basis for comparison in his response to Tinubu, which was submitted to the tribunal.

“The comparison of the second respondent (Tinubu) with the first petitioner ( Atiku) who had attained the eminent position of Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for eight years is unfounded,” Atiku said.

The former VP said unlike him, Tinubu is being  dogged by many “controversies such as age, state of origin, identity, educational qualifications represented by certificates obtained from universities and colleges, forfeiture in drug-related offences and failure to disclose dual nationality to the 1st respondent (INEC), among others.”

Atiku argued that rather than respond to the issues he raised in his petition, Tinubu went on to dwell on “extraneous facts, contradictory, evasive, speculative and vague assertions.”

Through his primary attorney, Chris Uche (SAN), Atiku, among others, claimed that Tinubu was unqualified to lead Nigeria because he reportedly forfeited $460,000 to the US government in a drug-related court case.

The VP added that: “Tinubu holds dual citizenship of Nigeria and Guinea, having voluntarily acquired the citizenship of the Republic of Guinea.”

He maintained that the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the elections should be annulled, because he did not secure 25 per cent of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory.

Defending the President-elect, however, the APC Director of Publicity, Bala Ibrahim, berated Atiku raising the drugs allegation, adding that “I am happy that he admitted that he is a perpetual loser. If you know that you are proud loser, why stand for an election that you know the outcome even from where you stand? What’s the point?”

In the meantime, the Labour Party candidate, Obi, accused INEC of bias in his own statement, calling the electoral umpire’s determination that Tinubu won the poll and that the petitions contesting the declaration should be dismissed embarrassing.

The fact that INEC, which ought to be impartial, filed a preliminary objection to the petitions contesting Tinubu’s victory, according to Obi, is bizarre.

 “The first respondent, forgetting its role as an electoral umpire, gave a Notice of Preliminary Objection to challenge the alleged incompetence of the petition.

“The global best practice for electoral umpires in national elections is that an electoral body must avoid creating the impression that it has no respect for neutrality in an electoral contest between candidates.

“The appellate courts have repeatedly admonished the first respondent of its need to remain neutral in election proceedings. However, the first respondent, hereof, has remained impervious to change.

“Therefore, it is not only an embarrassment but a repudiation of the duty of the first respondent when it adorns the garb of a contestant in an election it conducted as an umpire to raise preliminary objection against an election petition as in the case hereof.”