Atiku vows to continue protesting until election irregularities are addressed
NEWS DIGEST – On Monday, Mr Atiku Abubakar staged a peaceful protest at the Independent National Electoral Commission’s headquarters in Abuja to dispute the February 25 presidential election that resulted in Bola Ahmed Tinubu being declared the winner.
Atiku, the Peoples Democratic Party candidate, said he would continue to protest until the election results are examined for electoral irregularities that skewed the outcome in favour of Mr Tinubu.
“All the provisions of the current electoral law have been completely contravened. We were protesting and then INEC was not listening and went on to announce the result.,” Atiku said at the protest on Monday.
“We have the right to protest and it will continue for a very long time, either every day or any other day. We have the right to protest under the constitution, and it doesn’t stop us from going to the court.’’
Mr Atiku came in second place in the polls, losing to APC candidate Tinubu by 1.8 million votes, according to the figures compiled by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
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Dressed in black with other PDP protesters, the party’s National Chairman Iyorchia Ayu highlighted that the election result was impacted by irregularities and warned the Commission that the party would explore all options to defend their mandate in the upcoming governorship election on Saturday.
“We reject and declare as unacceptable the outcome, announcement and declaration of the presidential election results,” Ayu said.
“We demand an explanation why you proceeded with the declaration of the election results marred by irregularities against all calls to address the complaints brought to your attention before and during the collation process.’’
Ayu finally urged Nigerians at home and abroad to defend their constitutional right to vote freely for the candidate of their choice by exerting pressure on the Commission to review the results.
Mr Festus Okoye, the National Commissioner and Chairman of Voter Education, who received the letter from the party on behalf of INEC, said the Commission will look into the concerns of the party and deal with any remedial issues if there are any.
INEC, according to Mr Festus, has no affiliation with any political party or candidate. Mr Festus assured that its loyalty was to the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria instead.
“I am going to go and hand over the protest letter to the chairman of the commission and I want to assure you that the commission will meet over this letter, look into it and address some of the issues,” he said.
