The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council has called on security agencies to caution Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate in Nigeria’s February 25, 2023 elections, from making incendiary remarks over the outcome of the poll.
Bayo Onanuga, APC PCC’s Director of Media and Publicity, made the appeal in a statement on Friday in Abuja.
Onanuga spoke against the backdrop of comments made by Obi during television appearances.
He said: “The defeated Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, still goes around inflaming passions.
“Spreading lies as if he is still campaigning for the highest office in the land, weeks after the exercise was concluded and a winner announced.
“We are worried about his recent media rounds on Arise TV and Channels TV, in which he made profoundly misleading, criminally false and inciting statements about the election that he lost woefully.
“We call on the security agencies to caution Obi from further making incendiary remarks, especially after he claim he is challenging the results of the election in the tribunal.”
The APC PCC Director of Media and Publicity said Obi derided the election considered by many to be the best in our recent history, describing it as the worst, wrong election and not God’s will.
Onanuga added that Obi, a former two-term Governor of Anambra State, had in one moment likened the election to robbery.
He said: “He also fleetingly wore the toga of a political scientist redefining democracy, which the world knows as government of the people, by the people and for the people.
“Later, he clarified in his moments of sobriety after leaving the studio, that what he wanted to challenge in court was the process of declaring the winner of the election.
“On Channels TV few days later, Obi made the ridiculous claim about his stolen mandate.
“Echoing the position of his unthinking mob of supporters, who believe that he won the election because some sponsored polls made the claim before the election.”
Onanuga said the APC PCC considered Obi’s claim as very fraudulent as he fell short of winning any mandate.
He added that Obi came third, not even second, losing by 2.6 million votes to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the APC candidate and the President-elect, despite getting outrageously padded votes from his ethnic South East states.
He added that from the false narrative Obi had been pushing, he was the one trying to steal Tinubu’s mandate.
This, Onanuga said, he was doing by appealing to tribal and religious sentiments to snatch what does not belong to him.
He added that the APC PCC considered Obi’s TV statements as prejudicial to the case he had filed and contemptuous of the court.
He said: “Only a desperate politician like Obi will embark on his course of action: seeking justice in court and simultaneously embarking on a mission of blackmailing and intimidating the judiciary.
“He is trying to present himself before his case takes off in court as a helpless, cheated victim of the system, robbed of a mandate by INEC.
“He is trying to position himself as the candidate who won the people, who is loved by the people, going by his self-serving definition of democracy.
“His antics, if he is able to sway the judges is to make them cancel the entire election, even without sufficient, substantial proof of malpractice.”
He added that this would pave way for his dream alliance with the Peoples Democratic Party, the second losing party, in a fresh election.
Onanuga recalled that the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, spoke about his readiness to enter into such alliance in his post-poll press conference, as he accused Obi of taking his votes in the South South and South East regions.
He said: “We hope the men and women of the judiciary will not fall for Obi’s cheap tactics and really examine the cases before them on merit and on the basis of substantial evidence presented.”
Onanuga added that even in the court, Obi would lose woefully.
He however advised him to stop attacking the integrity of the election just because he did not win the majority votes and the constitutional spread in 24 states.
He further advised the Labour Party presidential candidate to stop deceiving his gullible followers and raising unrealistic hopes about reclaiming the presidency from Tinubu.
“We also advise the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to caution Television houses giving Obi the platform to de-legitimise a free and fair election, when he has taken his case to court,” Onanuga said.
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