The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, in this interview, speaks on the decision of the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to head to court following his defeat by President Muhammadu Buhari at the February 23 polls. He describes the PDP candidate as an unserious politician, adding that the pedigree of Buhari easily won him the election before the actual votes.
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Referendum
I am talking as a proud Nigerian because some people thought Saturday election was going to be war, election is not another word for war, it is a day to celebrate democracy. It is the only day in a democracy in which everybody is equal.
And I am happy that Nigerians have spoken and they did everything to maintain peace in spite of the fact that there were some elements who, notwithstanding the efforts by security agencies, conducted themselves in a way that led to violence.
Unfortunately, some of our countrymen and women lost their lives in the process. We join in commiserating with the families of those who lost their lives. And we pray that God will give their families the fortitude to bear the loss. But I also believe that government must do everything possible to identify those behind the killings and bring them to justice.
Each time hoodlums and ballot box snatchers maim and kill, in trying to disrupt the will of Nigerian people and they go away without anybody being prosecuted, the culture of impunity is threatened and the rule of law is weakened.
We of the APC congratulate our candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari, for the renewed mandate; we believe that what happened last Saturday was a referendum on the integrity of President Buhari. However, the PDP candidate who lost and who was a signatory to the peace accord, having suffered this defeat which I think he deserved, went on to say that he rejects the result and making very laughable arguments as the basis for his decision.
Now I want to speak to some of the claims Alhaji Atiku Abubakar made. If there is anything, this was a very peaceful election apart from those isolated incidents and I am happy that the international community as well as Nigerian observers are unanimous that this election was free, fair and credible. I am convinced, as INEC has announced, that this election reflects the will of the people of Nigeria.
Living in the past
Atiku pointed out what he described as statistical impossibilities. And he claimed that he had the two zones where he is strongest and the votes in those areas were smaller and that the margin of victory was also small.
Now he specifically referred to the South-South and South-East. I want to refresh the minds of Nigerians, by just rolling out the voting pattern since 1999, the number of votes that were allegedly cast in favour of PDP. In 1999, which was the election conducted by the military government then, President Olusegun Obasanjo won that election with 18.7 million votes. But by 2003, when PDP assumed full incumbency and when Obasanjo began to describe general elections as a do-or-die affair and when Atiku was Vice President to Obasanjo, they catapulted their votes from 18.7 votes to 24.4 million.
This cannot be explained whether by the reason of population growth or even for popularity of the party if you recall the feelings of Nigerians then. In 2007, incidentally that was an election in which I participated then in Edo State, PDP was able to increase their numbers from 24.4million in 2003 to 24.6million. Various electoral tribunals were set up to review those elections and, in many states, the elections were nullified. I am one of the very few who went to court and got my mandate restored after PDP ruthlessly rigged me out. By 2011, PDP scored 22.5million votes but, by 2015, when the card reader was introduced, PDP’s fortune dropped to 12.8 million votes and, of course, in 2019, which is the current one, PDP scored 11.1 million votes. In 2015, President Buhari scored 1.9million votes in Kano but, in 2019, it dropped to 1.4million. I would have loved to hear what Atiku thinks about that.
Why Buhari won
Now let us look at President Buhari’s score card. As the candidate of the CPC, he scored, in 2011, 12.2million votes. And with the alliance formed by ACN, ANPP, CPC and part of APGA, in 2015, he scored 15.4million votes, again courtesy of the card reader which did not allow people to write results as they deemed fit. Now, in 2019, President Buhari got fewer votes than he got in 2015, 15.2million votes. So when Atiku talks about statistical impossibilities, I don’t want to call him a poor student of statistics. But talking about statistical impossibilities, I invite you to reflect on the total number of new registered voters.
Don’t forget that the whole idea of periodic review of voters’ registration is essentially to enable those who have become 18 years and above to register. And whereas the average population growth is around 3 per cent, how do you explain that under the new registration exercise conducted by INEC, in the South-South, the newly registered voters averaged 25 per cent. In the South-East, the average is about 36 per cent.
In North-West, the average is about 26 per cent. In North East, the average is about 28 per cent. So are we suggesting that Nigeria ’s population has increased by as much as 25 per cent or in the case of South- East as much as 36 per cent? Obviously there were calculated attempts in some parts of the country to do multiple registrations and you have so many PVCs that, as we speak, have not been collected.
And if reports from security agencies are anything to go by, there are quite a number of persons who were caught with thousands of PVCs. This explains why even when journalists report about massive turn out in our elections when you compare the final results, you will find that the average of about 30 per cent of registered voters participated. So if we want to talk about statistical wonders, there will be a lot to talk about.
But let me say that if only Alhaji Abubakar has taken time to properly review the performance of his political party over the years and compare it with the performance of President Buhari over the same years, it would have been clearer to him. Secondly, to suggest that votes were suppressed in the South-South and South-East is not to appreciate the damage that the resort to card readers has done to election riggers. The truth is that when we conducted election in Anambra, an isolated election, no governor secured 400,000 votes. And anyone familiar with the realities of Rivers knows that if we conduct a free and fair election, and if you deny the dead to come out and vote and return to the grave, it will be impossible for them to get more than 500,000 in the state. But you will recall that we used to record 99.9 voters from Rivers before the advent of card readers. That is not possible now, the same thing goes for Delta State. So rather than Atiku thinking that rigging has come to stay, he needs to be reminded that our electoral process has been improved such that rigging has been reduced.
Petitioning INEC
As we speak, we have a petition that we have written to INEC, how we were rigged out in Akwa Ibom State. And it is interesting that it is the PDP that is complaining about the outcome of the election in that state. How do you explain the fact that INEC cancelled so many units, not only in Akwa Ibom but also in other states in order to declare PDP candidates winners? That was how Senator Akpabio was rigged out in Akwa Ibom.
Atiku reneged in his promise to Peace Committee
When the peace committee under the leadership of Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar invited political parties to commit themselves to peace and to accept the outcome of the election, you recall that PDP and Atiku were conspicuously absent at the first meeting. Of course following public outcry and suspicion and pressure from their friends, they reluctantly went through the back and appended their signatures to the peace accord at the office of Gen.Abubakar rather than where it was meant to take place. So from day one, Atiku made up his mind that unless he wins the election, it is not free and fair. Now we ask, what is the value for the peace accord? It took us a lot of time that day, we were supposed to go on a campaign but because of our commitment to peace, we decided to attend that programme. And I am glad that the election went well. Of course, watching Atiku yesterday, he alleged that the stock market crashed and that we lost about N85billlion just on hearing that President Buhari had won the election. That is twisting the facts.
He promised to privatise NNPC and float the Naira.
Those who were waiting for an Atiku free market regime to come on board for them to turn Nigeria to kalo kalo economy, obviously, must take their flight. Nigeria does not need soft- hearted investors. We need genuine investors who has faith in our country and who has long term interest in our country.
We want people who will invest in genuine production and industries, not people who will play on our foreign exchange regime to make money without a business address. If these are the kind of businessmen Atiku is talking about, the genuine Nigerians who are victims of these manipulations of our foreign exchange regime, we cannot but open the skies, let them fly back and they can never return. But I believe that genuine investors who have businesses in Nigeria, who knows the huge market potentials, genuine service providers cannot but look forward to come to Nigeria to take advantage of our huge market.
But I think it also borders on arrogance for Atiku to suggest that our future is tied to his presidency. Atiku is destined never to be President of Nigeria. Leadership is about character. Atiku’s desperation is so obvious that in 2003, he challenged his own boss, President Obasanjo, not to do second term. Subsequently, Atiku decamped to ACN. I was in the ACN then, they offered him the ticket.
Once he lost he returned to PDP, he contested again the primaries against Jonathan, he lost again. He decamped again and returned to APC. Once he lost the nomination and he did his calculation and realized that he will not be able to defeat President Buhari in APC primaries, he again took flight and went back to PDP. Can you recount how many times he has decamped? Now, such a political rolling stone, does he think that Nigerians are so insane as to think that a man whose interest is about himself and who has confessed that he is going into this race to enrich his friends, that such person will be a candidate to be elected at a time like this?
We will meet Atiku in court
Atiku said he is heading to court. I don’t have a problem with that. We hope to meet him in court. We will equally cross petition in some areas because in Adamawa State he had already lost the election before he did some magic that gave him that narrow victory in the state and other parts of the country.
Atiku raised the on whether it was possible to explain the turn out in Borno where there is insecurity. It is simple, in 2015 elections, President Jonathan acknowledged that about 28 local governments were effectively under the control of Boko Haram. And told the nation that it was impossible to conduct elections in those local governments.
But it is to the credit of President Muhammadu Buhari that all the 774 local government Areas are currently under the control of the Nigerian government. So Atiku has to understand that those numbers are a reflection of the substantial peace existing in the North-East. If he is not familiar with it, it is because he does not visit home more often, those who live there know better.
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