The All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign council said it will challenge the results scored by the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi at the just concluded presidential election in the court.
Atiku of the PDP and Obi of the LP who came second and third respectively in the last Saturday’s presidential polls have resolved to challenge their APC’s counterpart, Bola Tinubu victory in the court over alleged irregularities.
But in fight back manner, Festus Keyamo, the chief spokesperson of APC presidential campaign council at press conference in Abuja said they were going to file counter petition against the opposition parties.
Keyamo said the votes garnered by the opposition candidates, particularly LP’s Obi were fraudulent obtained as evident in the electoral malpractices perpetrated in the south-east.
He said: “As I am talking to you, we have constituted our legal team. We are going to court too. Let it not be that they are the only ones going to court. I am part of the legal team.”
Speaking earlier, Dele Alake, the special adviser, media and communications of the presidential campaign council urged Atiku and Obi to pursue their grievances with decorum.
He said the complaints by the candidates of the two opposition parties over electronic transmission of the election result is not supported by law.
Alake, said the claim that INEC did not use the BVAs is false, adding that those who voted across Nigeria, including Atiku and Obi, were accredited by the machines.
“We must say, however, that listening to both Atiku and Obi yesterday, (Thursday) left us in the APC family confounded. We understand that there has been an orchestrated campaign by the acolytes of PDP and LP in the media to discredit the Presidential election.
“What we did not expect is that the two presidential candidates and, indeed, their political parties, would shamefully re-echo the puerile and unimaginative arguments that are being canvassed by political illiterates and mischief-makers who are crying wolf on the social media.
“As we can see, these two, otherwise experienced politicians are pinpointing lack of adherence to guidelines as basis for discrediting votes lawfully cast by Nigerians.
“We shall examine the so-called process that was purportedly breached by the electoral body and how, in their wild imagination, undermined the credibility of the election.
“The complaint over the electronic transmission of the result is not supported by law. Section 38 of the Electoral Act 2022 referred to, by the PDP and LP has nothing to do with transmission of election results.
“Section 60, subsection 2 of the Act deals with transmission of results and it is at the discretion of INEC. The Act does not contain any mandatory provision regarding the transmission of results.
“In any case, the process of transmitting results from polling units, whether real-time, two days later or at any time, cannot in anyway change the results that have been announced, right after the counting in the presence of the parties’ agents and to the hearing of the voters.
“It is, therefore, nonsensical to insinuate that time variation in uploading results would cause a change in the figures.
“The loss of Katsina and Lagos to PDP and LP respectively were contrary to expectations. BVAS brought the intended credibility to voters’ accreditation such that many governors and well-established politicians lost elections in what should be safe areas.
“The era of ghost-voting and snatching of ballot boxes is gone. Experience in the last governorship election in Osun State has shown, over-voting would automatically lead to outright cancellation of results of polling units based on provision of the new Electoral Act,” he stated.
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