2023 elections: Calls for run-off poll baseless – Tinubu

VANGUARD

ABUJA– The President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has described calls for a run-off of the March 18th 2023 presidential election.

The President-elect also queried the legal competence of the petition the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its candidate, Atiku Abubakar, filed to nullify his election.

Tinubu, in a preliminary objection he entered before the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, in Abuja, described the PDP candidate as a consistent serial loser that had since 1993, crisscrossed different political parties, in search of power. 

He said he would during the hearing of the petition, lead evidence before the court to show how Atiku’s emergence as a candidate in the presidential election that held on February 25, led to the “balkanisation” of the opposition PDP.

According to him; “The 1st petitioner (Atiku) has been consistently contesting and losing successive presidential elections in Nigeria since 1993, whether at the party primary election level or at the general election; including 1993, when he lost the Social Democratic Party (SDP) primary election to the late Chief M.K.O Abiola; 

“…2007, when he lost the presidential election to the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua; 2011, when he lost the Peoples Democratic Party presidential primary election to President Goodluck Jonathan; 2015, when he lost the APC primary election to President Muhammadu Buhari; 2019, when he lost the presidential election to President Muhammadu Buhari; and now, 2023, when he has again, lost the presidential election to the respondent.  

“Further to (iv) supra, it was/is not a surprise and/or not by accident that the electorate rejected the 1st petitioner at the polls of the presidential election held on 25th February, 2023”.

Insisting that he was validly returned as winner of the presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Tinubu told the court that unlike Atiku, he has been “a most consistent politician, who has not shifted political tendency and alignment”.

“The 1st petitioner has consistently crisscrossed different political parties of Nigeria, including being a member of the PDP, before joining the Action Congress in 2007, when he was the presidential candidate of the party; returned to the PDP thereafter, before joining the 3rd respondent in 2015, where he contested the primary election with President Muhammadu Buhari, before returning to the PDP in 2019 to emerge as its presidential candidate.