The All Progressives Congress has said it has in its possession pieces of evidence of massive rigging perpetrated by the Labour Party, especially in the South-East states where Peter Obi got more than 90 percent of the votes cast.
The Labour Party Presidential Candidate has vowed to go to court to challenge the outcome of Saturday’s elections which threw up the flag bearer of the APC Bola Tinubu as the winner.
Bayo Onanuga, the Director, Media and Publicity of the APC Presidential Campaign Council said in a press statement that it was within the right of Obi and his party to seek redress but the ruling party is sure it would be an exercise in futility as Tinubu genuinely won the elections.
It insisted that the high return of votes from the east was reflective of the voters’ intimidation, harassment and widespread rigging.
“We need us to forewarn Mr. Obi, that when he gets to court he should be prepared to tell the world how his party won over 90% of votes in his region of South East while other parties got almost nothing. We have evidence of voter suppression, intimidation and harassment in South East especially of those who came out to vote for our party.
“Also when Mr Obi gets to court, he will have to convince the court with his allegation of rigging in over 40,000 polling units across the country, especially in North West and North East where his party had no party agents and did not sign results sheets as required by law. It is our assumption that the Labour Party will enlist PDP agents to prove its fraud claims since it is an affiliate of PDP.
The APC lambasted Obi for running a campaign hinged on divisive elements that threatened the existence of the country.
The party said: “We want to state again for the umpteenth time that Mr. Obi didn’t win the presidential election and could not have won under any circumstances. This is because he had no path to winning a national election in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society like Nigeria where a candidate running in a national election must appeal to the cross-section of our pluralistic society.
Mr. Obi anchored his presidential campaign on the failed strategy of ethnicity and religion, the divisive and dangerous politics that has hobbled the progress of our country for decades. Nigerians simply rejected an ethnic and religious bigot through their ballots.
“Mr. Obi all through his campaign presented himself as the candidate of the Christians and the Church, who wanted to help ‘take back their country” from the Nigerian Muslims.
“His campaign also ran on the engine of ethnicity, inflaming strong Igbo sentiments. He also sought to cash in on the supposed youth discontent in Nigeria, as fuelled by the ENDSARS protest in 2020.
“While Labour Party positioned its candidate as the harvester of the youth votes, its planners forgot that Nigeria does not have a homogeneous and monolithic youth population that can deliver bloc vote to any candidate.
“All the major parties that contested the election also have strong youth appeal and supporters. The lesson in Mr. Obi’s defeat in the election is that no politician in Nigeria can win a presidential race by being a sectional and an anointed candidate of any religion.”
