President Muhammadu Buhari has said that last Saturday’s presidential poll the produced the Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress as winner, is flawed.
This is as President Buhari charged Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party to challenge the election results in court if they have proof that the exercise was rigged in Mr Tinubu’s favour.
This was contained in a statement by his media aide, Garba Shehu, wherein the Buhari congratulated the president-elect.
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He said;
“That is not to say the exercise (Saturday’s election) was without fault. For instance, there were technical problems with electronic transmission of the results.
“Of course, there will be areas that need work to bring further transparency and credibility to the voting procedure. However, none of the issues registered represent a challenge to the freeness and fairness of the elections.
“I know some politicians and candidates may not agree with this view. That too is fine. If any candidate believes they can prove the fraud they claim is committed against them, then bring forward the evidence.
“If they cannot, then we must conclude that the election was indeed the people’s will – no matter how hard that may be for the losers to accept. If they feel the need to challenge, please take it to the courts, not to the streets.”
The president’s statement followed the declaration of the former Lagos governor as winner of the 2023 presidential election by the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu’s at the National Collation Centre in Abuja.
Tinubu scored 8,794,726 votes to defeat PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, winning 12 of 36 states of Nigeria. Mr Abubakar polled 6,984,520 votes.
Peter Obi of Labour Party, came third, polling 6,101,533 votes.
The declaration of Mr Tinubu as the president-elect came amidst huge protest by PDP and Labour Party, calling for suspension of result collation and and outright cancellation of the presidential poll due to INEC’s failure to upload election results on its server in real time.
The electoral umpire has since presented Certificates of Return to the president-elect and his running mate, Kashim Shettima.
