Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the PDP’s presidential candidate, and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the President-elect, were at odds over the conduct of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the opposition party leadership’s protest against the February 25 presidential election.
During a protest at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja, Atiku, the National Chairman of the PDP, and other party leaders described the presidential election as a ruse.
They also said that INEC’s integrity is in jeopardy because it allegedly failed to fulfill its promises regarding the use of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System, BVAS, and the electronic transmission of results from the polling units to its result viewing portal in real time.
However, Tinubu disagreed with Atiku regarding the election’s conduct and outcome, stating that the PDP candidate had no chance of winning and should stop protesting traffic in Abuja. Tinubu asked the former Vice President to take his complaints to the court, not INEC headquarters, where they would be heard.
The PDP initiative presented an emphatic dissent letter to the INEC, to enroll its disappointment over the lead and result of the February 25 Official political decision.
Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, the National Chairman of the PDP, presented the letter to INEC’s Commissioner in Charge of Voter Education and Information, Dr. Festus Okoye, on behalf of INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, who led other party leaders and supporters to the INEC Headquarters yesterday.
The party stated in the letter, which was addressed to the chairman of INEC and signed by Ayu and PDP National Secretary Samuel Anyanwu, that the decision to embark on a peaceful march, supported by the protest letter, was made following a number of meetings to evaluate the elections.
At the same time that President-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu advised Atiku to respect his age and claimed that the PDP’s protest to INEC headquarters had reached a new low of absurdity, INEC has maintained that it had no allegiance to any party.
