The 18 political parties that ran presidential and National Assembly candidates on February 25 were praised by the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Kukah, for upholding the principles of the signed National Peace Agreement.
On Friday morning, Kukah gave the compliment in an interview with Arise Television News. According to him, the candidates’ conduct was admirable and should be congratulated for bringing respect to Nigerian politics and the electoral process.
As the convener of the National Peace Committee, I actively monitored the implementation of the values stated upon the signing of the Peace Agreement.
“Let me praise the major political players because, notwithstanding where we are right now, Nigerians must admit that the presidential contenders did behave in a way that earned great respect for politics and political processes. They merit our praise because we did not encounter the customary accusations and so such,” he remarked.
Meanwhile, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, in separate press conferences yesterday, both refused to accept defeat, saying they would go to court to challenge the results of the presidential election, in which Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress won and was given a certificate of return as the new president.
Also, both candidates turned down Tinubu’s offer of a helping hand. Tinubu had asked both parties and candidates to work together to improve the nation in his acceptance address on Wednesday.
Atiku of the PDP claimed in his speech yesterday that INEC had “failed horribly” to hold free, fair, and credible elections, ruining the president, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd. ), who had hoped to leave it as his legacy.
He continued by calling the election a “rape of democracy” and saying that he was fighting not for himself but for Nigeria’s future.
Peter Obi of the LP similarly declared unequivocally that he had won the election and was prepared to back it up in court. The outcomes of the election, he continued, had been “programmed” and deviated from INEC’s guidelines, and the country’s so-called leaders had robbed the people of Nigeria.
Bayo Onanuga, the director of media and publicity for the APC Presidential Campaign Council, responded to the LP presidential candidate’s assertions by saying in a statement titled “We will meet Peter Obi in Court” that the president-elect was prepared to debate Obi in court as long as there was proof that he had won the election.