Abdullahi Adamu, the national chairman of the All Progresses Congress (APC) said the loss of some presidential candidates, including Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and Peter Obi of Labour Party at the recent election was not a rejection of what they stand for by the people.
Adamu said it was is in the nature of competitions among political parties that out of the many that offer themselves to serve the people, only one is chosen at any one time.
The national chairman stated these at press conference in Abuja on Thursday on the outcome of the 2023 presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu.
He said APC recognised the victors, but do not recognise the vanquished and urged rivals parties to join the ruling party so as to take up the same challenges for which they offered their services.
Adamu strongly condemned what he described as the shameful conduct of the leadership of PDP and the Labour Party in their unwarranted attempts to sabotage the elections and throw the country into chaos and avoidable crisis.
“It is a pity that they take their loss so badly. They ought to be good sportsmen and women in the political arena.Their protest walk out from the collation centre was childish but clearly a calculated attempt to rubbish the elections and impugn the integrity of the electoral umpire.
“Their call for the cancellation of the elections over their unproven allegations of electoral fraud must be the height of diabolical desperation. All patriotic citizens of this country who value peace and unity of purpose must rise with one voice to condemn these elements who want to parade themselves in the public space as the guardians of our electoral system.
“Aided by some self-appointed guardians of our nation’s conscience, they wanted to turn the victory of our party into ashes in the mouths of all Nigerians and set the country up for global opprobrium.
“It is condemnable and unpatriotic and unworthy of men who ought to recognise that in a democracy respect for the right of the people to freely choose their leaders through an election is the fundamental pillar of that form of government.
“Nothing in our laws and the constitution gives aggrieved individuals and groups the right to abort the unequivocal choices freely made by the people in their wisdom. Power belongs to the people and the people must be allowed to exercise it in the best way they choose in instituting the government of their choice,”
The former Nasarawa state governor said the laws of the land provide channels for the redress of electoral grievances and urged those who feel aggrieves to avail themselves of those channels to seek redress.
“To set the house on fire in pursuit of a rat is not an act of courage or patriotism. It stands condemnable.
We are happy to see that the people have seen through their unpatriotic antics and rejected their attempts to set the country on fire.
“We commend the highly placed and patriotic former public officers who instantly rose up in defence of the conduct of the elections and the election results and condemned the saboteurs. They have once more risen to the challenge of saving our nation from a needless crisis,” Adamu said.
He said APC accepted the victory of its presidential candidate and the party with humility and gratitude to the almighty God and the entire people of the country.
Adamu expressed hope that just as APC won the presidency it is going to win next Saturday’s governorship election in many states.
“I wouldn’t say all because APC is not a greedy party. We will win all the winnable and will make some sacrifices where necessary, so that democracy can flourish,” he said.
The abysmal performance of APC in some of its strongholds, Adamu said: It is the nature of things you win some, you lose some and the fact that we lost some major states, like Lagos, Kano, Katsina and even Nassarawa, Kaduna, you cannot be talking about democracy about evenness of representation at the same time looking for you must win everything.
“The fact that we lost these places and we didn’t shed tears we did not cry foul, make us the real political party in this country.”
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