INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as president-elect is daylight robbery says Pa Adebanjo.
Glamtush reports that Pa Ayo Adebanjo, leader of the Pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, says the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections as conducted by Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) fell short of a democratic process.
This online platform had earlier reported that the INEC declared Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of Saturday’s presidential election.
According to INEC official results, the 70-year-old Tinubu came out tops in 12 of Nigeria’s 36 States, and secured significant numbers in several states to claim the highest number of votes to defeat main challengers – Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party who came second and third places respectively.
While Tinubu polled a total of 8,794,726 million votes, the 76-year-old former Vice President, who has now run for president six times, secured 6,984,520 votes, and Obi, who, in less than a year, galvanized young voters in a manner some have described as unprecedented, finished the race with 6,101,533.
It had been reported that reaction has continued to trail the election which both local and international observers had described as falling below standard and lacked transparency in all yardsticks.
The election was largely characterised by voter suppression, thuggery, and manipulation of results which led to the electoral umpire breaching its set out guidelines for the election, which stipulated that Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), an electronic device designed to read Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and authenticate voters would be used for accreditation and uploading of polling units results.
However, that didn’t happen in the election as INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, said that they had glitches with the system, without providing any specific.
But reacting to the declaration of former Lagos State Governor, Tinubu as the president-elect, in an interview with Arise TV on Friday, Pa Adebanjo, described the result of the election as declared by INEC Chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu, as simply a daylight robbery.
The elder statesman who supported the Labour Party presidential candidate, who came third in the INEC result to challenge the result in court, said the declaration of Tinubu as the winner was only temporal.
For Adebanjo, Tinubu’s victory was a pyrrhic victory.
“As of that election, there was no result. What they have done to Tinubu is like what they did to the Interim Government of Shonekan. It was a pyrrhic victory allowed. As the leader (presidential candidate) of the Labour Party, Peter Obi said, we will prove it in court.
“I listened to the chairman of INEC, when Dino Melaye told him to suspend results because of a lot of irregularities. He said, ‘why don’t you let us correct them before we proceed?’ He said, ‘No!’ But, INEC chairman said, ‘let me complete this exercise and I will review’.
“This is a daylight robbery. The whole country supported you (INEC Chairman) to amend the Electoral Law and you promised to transmit the result by electoral means. You now went back to what we have fought against. What a shame! This government is a disaster,” Adebanjo added.
