APC sets up legal team to defend mandate
The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council announced on Friday that it had 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.
According to ThisDay Live, the campaign council stated this during a press conference in Abuja in response to the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party, Peter Obi, following their separate press conferences on Thursday.
Festus Keyamo, the APC PCC's spokesperson, stated that he was a member of the party's legal team.
"As I speak to you, we have formed our legal team," Keyamo said. We're also going to court. They should not be the only ones going to court. I am a member of the legal team."
Dele Alake, the APC PCC's Special Adviser on Media and Communication, thanked the PDP and the LP for "opting for the rule of law" after "the initial belligerent posture as they continue their baseless journey of chasing after a mirage."
"We must thank the two of them for finally opting for the rule of law as opposed to the initial belligerent posture as they continue their baseless journey of chasing a mirage," Alake said.
According to the campaign council, the APC applauded the decision of both the PDP and LP candidates, as well as the NNPP candidates, to test their claims in court, as provided for by the constitution.
"We must say, however, that listening to both Atiku and Obi yesterday left us in the APC family perplexed," Alake said. We understand that there has been a coordinated campaign in the media by PDP and LP acolytes to discredit the presidential election.
"What we did not expect was for the two presidential candidates, as well as their political parties, to shamelessly re-echo the puerile and unimaginative arguments being advanced by political illiterates and mischief-makers on social media."
He stated that the claim that the Independent National Electoral Commission did not use the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System was false and an attempt to discredit Nigerians' right to vote.
He emphasized that the BVAS had accredited voters across Nigeria, including Atiku and Obi.
He claimed that the complaint about the electronic transmission of results was not legally supported.
"Section 38 of the Electoral Act 2022, as referred to by the PDP and the LP, has nothing to do with the transmission of election results," Alake explained. Section 60, Subsection 2 of the Act deals with results transmission, which is at the discretion of INEC. The Act makes no mandatory provisions for the transmission of results.
"In any case, the process of transmitting results from polling units, whether real-time, two days later or at any time, cannot in any way change the results that have been announced right after the counting in the presence of the parties' agents and to the hearing of the voters. As a result, insinuating that time variations in uploading results would cause a change in the figures is absurd."
He noted that the presidential election produced unprecedented results and defied conventions, adding that the deployment and use of BVAS was the sole reason for the elections' strange outcomes and upsets in many cases.
"The loss of Katsina and Lagos to the PDP and the LP, respectively, was contrary to expectations," the campaign council stated. BVAS provided the intended credibility to voter accreditation, causing many governors and well-known politicians to lose elections in areas that should have been safe bets.
"The era of ghost voting and ballot box stuffing is over. Over-voting, as demonstrated by the recent governorship election in Osun State, would automatically result in the cancellation of the polling unit results under the new Electoral Act.
"The same PDP that is attempting to deceive Nigerians was the culprit in the Osun State governorship election. Did they attempt it this time and fail? Or did they do it in the unexpectedly successful areas? Were they planning to hack the INEC server if results were uploaded in real time? Nigerians will find out soon."
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