Presidential Poll: Atiku, Obi head to court as Tinubu pledges fairness to all

Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, Peter Obi, said they will seek redress in court.

They all spoke Sunday after the declaration of Tinubu as president-elect on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The PDP described Tinubu’s victory as “a grave injustice which will not stand.”

Senator Dino Melaye, spokesman and Director Public Affairs of the PDP Presidential Campaign Committee, in a terse statement on Wednesday evening, said there will be no going back on the battle to retrieve the mandate which he called a “stolen one.”

Melaye said: “A clarion call on all Atiku’s supporters all over the world not to be perturbed. Weeping may tarry till night but joy cometh in the morning.

“This grave injustice shall not stand. The battle to retrieve our stolen mandate is a battle of no retreat, no surrender. We shall overcome,” he said.

We’ll contest defeat through legal means – Obi

Obi on the other hand, has said he would contest Tinubu’s victory through legal and peaceful means.

He said this on Wednesday in Abuja at a press conference addressed by his running mate, Senator Datti Baba-Ahmed.

Cancel presidential poll—NNPP

At a press conference yesterday, the National Chairman of NNPP, Rufai Alkali, said with the way it conducted the election, INEC had taken the country back to the pre-2015 era.

“We are deeply concerned that going by what had happened on election day, the election umpire has taken our country back to the pre-2015 era of election where everything goes: where voters were deliberately and systematically disenfranchised; where ballot box snatching and ballot box stuffing was the norm; where voter suppression was widespread; where violence and vote-buying were the main deciding factors of the outcome of elections; where security agents openly take side with the ruling party and participate actively in rigging elections,” he said.

Alkali said his party observed that “INEC deliberately undermined the NNPP in the process, allowed campaign on election day by the president and others; voter suppression, vote-buying, BVAS failure and over-voting, lying about IReV sever and election marred by unprecedented violence.”

He, on behalf of the NNPP, therefore, we demand the cancellation of the poll.

I’ll be fair to all – Tinubu

But while the major contenders in the election were expressing their grievances, President-elect Tinubu has pledged to be fair to all Nigerians irrespective of political or religious differences.

He made the pledge yesterday in Abuja after receiving his certificate of return alongside his running mate, Kashim Shettima, from INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.

Yakubu, in the early hours of Wednesday, declared Tinubu and Shettima victorious.

He said Tinubu polled a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat his main rival, Atiku who recorded 6,984,520 votes and Obi who polled 6,101,533 votes to come second and third respectively.

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