Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2023, Atiku Abubakar, yesterday descended verbally on Justices of the Supreme Court, saying said last Thursday’s on the February 25 presidential election has grave implications for the country’s future, including the erosion of trust in the electoral system.
But the presidency and the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) fired back at the former vice president, accusing g him of unashamedly constituting himself into a demagogue and anarchist in the way and manner he is seeking to pull down and delegitimize all the institutions of State, all in a futile bid to achieve what he could not get via the ballot box.
Atiku who spoke earlier at a press conference said while this phase of the contest is done, he was going nowhere but stay and continue the struggle with Nigerians.
“I am not going away. For as long as I breathe I will continue to struggle, with other Nigerians, to deepen our democracy and rule of law and for the kind of political and economic restructuring the country needs to reach its true potential. That struggle should now be led by the younger generation of Nigerians who have even more at stake than my generation,” he stated.
The former vice president, who spoke on the apex court’s judgement for the first time, lamented that the Supreme Court implied in its judgment that crime is good and should be rewarded.
He added that the verdict legitimizes illegality, forgery, as well as identities theft and perjury.
Pledging to keep fighting to enthrone democratic ideals, he however said the struggle should now be led by the younger Nigerians who have more at stake than his own generation.
He however made an appeal to the National Assembly to amend the laws to stop any court from resorting to technicalities, make the tenure of office for political office holders one term of six years and make all electoral cases dispute resolved before swearing in.
Atiku said Nigeria is the biggest loser with the Supreme Court verdict, which according to him, “legitimizes illegality, including forgery, identity theft, and perjury.”
He added: “If the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, implies by its judgment that crime is good and should be rewarded, then Nigeria has lost and the country is doomed irrespective of who occupies the Presidential seat.
“If the Supreme Court decides that the Electoral umpire, INEC, can tell the public one thing and then do something else in order to reach a corruptly predetermined outcome, then there is really no hope for the country’s democracy and electoral politics.
“Obviously, the consequences of those decisions for the country will not end at the expiration of the current government. They will last for decades. I am absolutely sure that history will vindicate me. We now know what the Supreme Court has decided”.
Atiku, who justified his decision to seek legal action over the outcome of the election, recalled how he fought for the return to democracy in 1999 and how he fought against a move by his former boss President Olusegun Obasanjo to get a third term in office.
He lamented that the reputation of Nigeria and Nigerians in the eyes of the world is at stake following the apex court’s verdict.
“We showed incontrovertible evidence that Bola A. Tinubu was not qualified to contest the Presidential Election because he forged the qualifying academic certificate, which he submitted to INEC. In fact, a simple check of Tinubu’s past records in its possession would have shown INEC that Tinubu broke the law and should not have been allowed to contest the election.
“We showed irrefutable evidence of gross irregularities, violence, and manipulations during the elections. We showed incontrovertible evidence that INEC violated the Electoral Act and deliberately sabotaged its own publicly announced processes and procedures in order to illegally declare Tinubu elected. The position of the Supreme Court, even though final, leaves so much unanswered.
“Even the rebuke by retired Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad is a confirmation from within the apex court that all is not well with the Supreme Court. The court and indeed the judiciary must never lend itself to politicization as it is currently the norm with nearly every institution in Nigeria.
“By the way, the strong rebuke of the apex court by the revered Justice, who had meritoriously served for more than four decades, should not be swept under the carpet.
“The alarm raised by Justice Muhammad and recently, former INEC Chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega, offer Nigerians an explanation into why the electoral and judicial system have become the lost hope of the common man.”
He lamented that Judges are no longer appointed based on merit but are products of the interplay of politics and nepotism.
He added that the appointment of electoral officials has also been hijacked by the ruling party as seen in the latest nomination of Resident Electoral Commissioners where card carrying members of the ruling party and aides to politicians in the APC are being appointed into INEC.
Speaking on the implications of PEPC and Supreme Court judgments, he said it will lead to “erosion of trust in the electoral system and our democracy;”
He said when people lose trust and confidence in elections, democracy is practically on life support.
He also noted that contestants in Nigeria’s elections would henceforth do whatever is necessary to be declared the winner.
But in a swift reaction, the presidency hit hard on Atiku for rejecting of the Supreme Court ruling reaffirming the election of President Tinubu.
In a statement issued by the special adviser to the president on information and strategy ,Bayo Onanuga, the presidency said Atiku finally found his voice after more than 96 hours to respond to his trouncing at the Supreme Court in a landmark judgment on his grossly incompetent election petition appeal.
Onanuga said the presidency was wrong to expect that Atiku at 77 would play the statesman and sportsman and accept, with equanimity, the verdict of the highest court and the people of Nigeria.
Onanuga noted that instead, Atiku unashamedly constituted himself into a demagogue and anarchist in the way and manner he sought to pull down and delegitimize all the institutions of State, all in a futile bid to achieve what he could not get via the ballot box.
He said, “At his press conference where he laboured, in vain, to once again manipulate public opinion and blame the judiciary for his self-inflicted defeat in the 25 February Presidential election, Alhaji Atiku launched a diatribe against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and judiciary, particularly our apex court, for not bending the law and the constitution to satisfy his whims and caprices.
“Atiku tried very hard to perfect his act of misinformation by seeking to lay claim to faux morality and higher ideals when in actual fact his entire life is antithetical to any higher ideals.
“For instance, Atiku claimed he worked along with others to end military rule in Nigeria when he was known to be in bed with the same junta who held democracy hostage and incarcerated his mentor, Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua (rtd), till death.
“He distanced himself from him while in detention to keep alive his governorship ambition on the platform of one of those inglorious Abacha political parties.
Onanuga said Atiku’s brand of politics is such that once an electoral process or election does not go his way or pave the way for his victory democracy becomes dysfunctional and must therefore be imperiled.
For him (Atiku), he noted, democracy should either go his way or the highway.
The presidential adviser said the PDP candidate was uncharitable and pugnacious in his choice of words and his view about Nigeria.
“We can only imagine the level of frustration that could make a former Vice President of Nigeria to hold such pessimistic view of a country where he once occupied the second highest position.
“The PDP candidate said Nigeria is doomed just because he failed to achieve his personal ambition.
“We want to tell Alhaji Atiku this: Nigeria is not doomed. It is only Atiku’s inordinate ambition to be President that is doomed. Nigeria is moving forward and set to achieve its manifest destiny as one of the most respected and successful nations of the world under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“Contrary to Atiku’s gloomy submission on our democracy, we are excited to tell the world that our democracy is thriving and blossoming. It is the reason, for the first time, since 1999 the character of our National Assembly and its outlook reflect the diversity and plurality of the choices and preferences of voters as a rainbow coalition of different parties as opposed to the practice in the past where just two parties dominated the national parliament.
“In today’s Nigeria, votes count. No amount of deliberate distortions of facts about our recent election by Alhaji Atiku and his partner, Peter Obi can vitiate the continuous improvement of our electoral process which local and international observers have hailed. As declared by the Supreme Court, IReV was not designed as an online collation centre. It was simply a public viewing centre for results.
The special adviser said PDP and Atiku, including Peter Obi’s faction of Labour Party cannot continue to insist on their own reality against commonsense, logic and the law.
He said Atiku and his army of hirelings knew why they lost the election.
“The PDP candidate lost because Nigerians preferred Bola Ahmed Tinubu and voted for him to be president. Tinubu, along with his APC, won because he offered a better vision for our country’s future. The All Progressives Congress as a united and formidable party which ran a well-coordinated campaign with his rank and file intact.
“Atiku lost because he went into a major election with a fragmented and tattered umbrella that could not hold together. There was no way Atiku and PDP could have won the election with the party platform under which he contested broken into four parts.
“If Atiku was not harboring a delusion of grandeur, we wonder how he could have envisaged any possible pathway to victory with Mr. Peter Obi’s Labour Party, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso’s NNPP and PDP G-5 Governors who took away possible PDP votes, while the APC went into the election as a strong, viable and unified entity”.
