By Damola Emmanuel
In a highly contentious and tension soaked World Press Conference, Tuesday, in Abuja, the media directorate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council, rubbished the call by three opposition parties that the Presidential election held last Saturday throughout the country be cancelled because, according to them, it was fundamentally flawed.
Three opposition parties-Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Labour Party, LP, and African Democratic Congress, ADC, had earlier, in a World Press Conference, called for outright cancellation of the election because, according to them, the vote was “irretrievably compromised”.
However, in a counter world press conference addressed by the Special Adviser on Media to the Council and APC candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Mr. Dele Alake, the APC maintained that their candidate had won the vote and the call by the opposition parties was tantamount to asking a doctor to abort a pregnancy at full term.
By asking for the cancellation of the election, the team insisted, the opposition parties were asking for the abortion of Nigeria’s democracy. It was a clear invitation to anarchy and they owed that the APC would resist it with every fibre of its being.
According to the team, APC and its candidate had won the election and the call for the abortion of the process would fail.
“Whoever is calling for the abortion of election at this stage is calling for the abortion of democracy,” Dele Alake declared, adding that those making the call were not democrats but self-serving individuals who wanted to take Nigeria through the June 12 route again.
“Nigeria will not be led to that ruinous path again,” Alake continued. “We have won the election. Asiwaju has won the election. We are leading nationwide by 1.5 million votes. There can’t be a re-run because there are regulations guiding the process. The position of the constitution is that for a candidate to be elected President, he must score 25 percent of the total votes cast in at least 24 of Nigeria’s 36 states. Our candidate has crossed that threshold. There can never be a re-run,” and the call for cancellation was a campaign against the survival of democracy in Nigeria.
“Those calling for the abortion of the process are not democrats, and they do not deserve the joy of victory,” Alake continued. “If you are not man enough to accept defeat, you have no moral right to enjoy the fruits of victory.”
The Director of Strategic Communications, Mr. Festus Keyamo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, added a legal perspective to the argument saying that what the three things demanded by the three opposition parties were not possible under the law.
Citing Section 45 of the Electoral Act, Keyamo said the Chairman of INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, was the returning officer for the presidential election at the national level and “he is final for that purpose”.
INEC Chairman has no power to review what the returning officers at the lower levels have done, Keyamo continued. In law, the process must be completed before any complaint can be looked into and, if necessary, reviewed as appropriate. “So, those calling for cancellation are asking for the impossible.”
Another member of the team, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, counselled those aggrieved about the process to wait for the completion of the process. “If you have complaints, go to court,” he said. “They should not attempt to abort this election. If they try, there will be consequences. Shame on them.”
