APC sets up legal team to defend election win

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has constituted a legal team to defend the mandate given to President-elect Bola Tinubu by Nigerians in the February 25 presidential election.

The move comes in response to separate press conferences held on Thursday by the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi.

Both parties announced they would contest the result of the election in court.

Festus Keyamo, spokesperson for the APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), confirmed he was part of the legal team constituted by the party.

Special Adviser on Media and Communication of the APC PCC, Dele Alake, thanked the PDP and LP for “opting for the rule of law” after “the initial belligerent posture as they continue their baseless journey of chasing after a mirage.”

Alake noted that listening to both Atiku and Obi had left the APC “confounded.”

He claimed there had been an orchestrated campaign by the acolytes of the PDP and the LP in the media to discredit the presidential election.

He went on to say that the claim that the Independent National Electoral Commission did not use the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System was false and an attempt to discredit the votes lawfully cast by Nigerians.

Alake stressed that voters across Nigeria, including Atiku and Obi, were accredited by the BVAS.

He said that the complaint over the electronic transmission of results was not supported by law.

Alake explained that the process of transmitting results from polling units, whether in real-time or two days later, cannot change the results that have been announced right after the counting in the presence of the parties’ agents and to the hearing of the voters.

He noted that the presidential election produced unprecedented outcomes and defied conventions, adding that the deployment and use of BVAS was the only reason the elections produced these strange outcomes and upsets in many cases.

The campaign council noted that the loss of Katsina and Lagos to the PDP and the LP, respectively, were contrary to expectations. BVAS brought intended credibility to voters’ accreditation such that many governors and well-established politicians lost elections in what should be safe bet areas.

The era of ghost-voting and stuffing of ballot boxes is gone, said Alake. As the experience in the last governorship election in Osun State has shown, over-voting would automatically lead to outright cancellation of the results of the polling units based on the provision of the new Electoral Act.

Alake noted that the same PDP that is trying to pull the wool across the face of Nigerians was the culprit in the Osun State governorship election. Did they try to do it this time and it failed? Or did they do it in the areas they unexpectedly won? Did they have a grand plan to hack the INEC server if results were uploaded in real-time? Nigerians will soon find out.

The campaign council said the APC welcomed the decision of both the PDP and LP, as well as the NNPP candidates, to test their claims in court as provided for by the constitution.

The council noted that the presidential election had been credible and transparent and urged Nigerians to remain calm as the judicial process takes its course.