Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has cautioned his counterpart in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to stop “awarding impossible victory” to himself while elections and collation of results are ongoing.
Atiku accused Tinubu of using an unnamed newspaper affiliated to him to peddle false reports about his impending victory in the presidential election held on Saturday, February 25, 2023.
Speaking on Sunday through his Director of Strategic Communications, Dele Momodu, Atiku claimed that APC chieftains and associates of Tinubu were seen attacking electoral officers and snatching balox boxes in a bid to scare away voters.
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Calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to call his party’s candidate to order, Momodu said “Despite all of these ugly attempts at stealing victory, the APC suffered its worst cataclysmic loss in most of the polling centers in Lagos. The same happened in Kano. Incapable of ever being sobered by the crushing humiliation in its traditional territories, we woke up this morning to read about the pathetic and illegal lies cooked up by the Tinubu media goons.
“Tinubu remains the only mainstream candidate whose homebase of South West was decimated by opposition parties in Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Osun and Ekiti. Most of the Northern Governors he also expected to help him garner votes in the Northern regions failed spectacularly to deliver the badly needed votes. He failed in the South East and South South.
The only candidate with the national spread is the PDP Presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. But as a responsible citizen and respected statesman, he will never rush to the media to claim his well deserved victory and glory after a long and torturous journey.
“We hereby call on INEC and the Federal Government to cage these troublesome APC Chieftains. We have all been witnesses to their unruly behaviour as they did everything to bully and blackmail President Muhammadu Buhari in order to chicken out of the currency swap policy.
“We also witnessed how they practically intimidated the President to the extent of forcing him to publicly display who he voted for in yesterday’s elections. It was quite a bizarre, unfortunate and unprecedented scene to watch. We advise the President to find the courage to call the bluff of these desperate politicians who feel they can buy the whole of Nigeria…”
Bayo Onanuga, a spokesperson for Tinubu’s campaign council, did not respond to phone calls put across to him for his comment.