The Presidential Campaign Council of the All Progressives Congress (APC) announced on Friday that it has formed a legal team to defend the mandate given to the party and President-elect Bola Tinubu by Nigerians in the February 25 presidential election. This announcement was made during a press conference in Abuja, which was held in response to the recent press conferences conducted by Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), as reported by ThisDay Live.
Festus Keyamo, the spokesperson for the APC PCC, confirmed his involvement in the newly constituted legal team. He stated, “As I am talking to you, we have constituted our legal team. We are going to court too. Let it not be that they are the only ones going to court. I am part of the legal team.” Dele Alake, the Special Adviser on Media and Communication for the APC PCC, expressed gratitude to the PDP and LP for choosing to pursue their claims through the legal system, contrasting this with their previous confrontational stance. He remarked, “We must thank the two of them for finally opting for the rule of law as against the initial belligerent posture as they continue their baseless journey of chasing after a mirage.”
The campaign council welcomed the decisions of both the PDP and LP, as well as the candidates from the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), to challenge their claims in court, as allowed by the constitution. However, Alake expressed confusion over the statements made by Atiku and Obi during their press conferences, highlighting what he described as an orchestrated campaign by their supporters to discredit the presidential election. He criticized the two candidates for echoing “puerile and unimaginative arguments” that he claimed were being propagated by political illiterates and mischief-makers on social media.
Alake refuted claims that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) failed to use the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), asserting that this was an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the votes cast by Nigerians. He emphasized that voters, including Atiku and Obi, were accredited using the BVAS. Furthermore, he argued that complaints regarding the electronic transmission of results lacked legal foundation. He clarified that “Section 38 of the Electoral Act 2022” cited by the PDP and LP does not pertain to the transmission of election results, while “Section 60, Sub-section 2” of the Act grants INEC discretion over this process without mandating any specific method of transmission.
Alake further explained that the timing of result transmission, whether in real-time or delayed, does not alter the results announced immediately after counting in the presence of party agents and voters. He stated, “It is, therefore, nonsensical to insinuate that time variation in uploading results would cause a change in the figures.” He noted that the presidential election yielded unprecedented outcomes that defied expectations, attributing this to the deployment and use of BVAS, which he claimed brought credibility to voter accreditation.
The campaign council pointed out that the losses of Katsina and Lagos to the PDP and LP, respectively, were unexpected, highlighting that BVAS contributed to the surprising electoral outcomes where established politicians lost in areas previously considered safe. They asserted that the era of ghost voting and ballot box stuffing is over, referencing the recent governorship election in Osun State, where over-voting led to the cancellation of results in certain polling units based on the new Electoral Act provisions. Alake questioned whether the PDP had attempted to manipulate the election results, suggesting that Nigerians would soon uncover the truth behind these allegations.
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