‘Interimists’ Have Failed In Their Plot — Uthman Shodipe-Dosunmu

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Uthman Shodipe-Dosunmu, says that those who are calling for Interim National Government (ING) have failed.

The presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu, was on March 1, declared winner of the February 25 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The former Lagos State governor polled a total of 8,794,726 votes from the 36 states and the FCT to emerge president-elect ahead of his closest rivals, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who got 6,984,520, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) who secured 6,101,533 votes.

Both Atiku and Obi are challenging the outcome of the presidential election in court.

Despite INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as President-elect, there are rumours that some elements are planning to install ING.

Making appearance on Channels Television recently, the LP Vice Presidential candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, had asked the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola, not to participate in the swearing-in of Tinubu as president over what he described as a “violation” of the 1999 Constitution.

According to Shodipe-Dosunmu, the interimists have graduated from sponsoring protesters lacking animation, denuded in spirit, devoid of the content of their fabled cause; into violence and intimations of disorder, threatening the nation with ruin while they challenge the outcome of the election at the courts.

He stated that having failed locally to achieve their goal, the interimists have gone into the international arena, “fabricating malice, sponsoring malignity, scribbling outrageous idiocy to defame , to destroy, to thwart the steady paces of democracy simply because they have lost.”

Shodipe-Dosunmu averred that those who are resolved on continuously discrediting the presidential election do no justice to themselves, and the country.

“Those who will not let it go, those who are contumaciously resolved on discrediting a free and fair democratic expression , do no justice to themselves, do no justice to their nation. They are self- inhabited, woven in a carapace of stunted vision. While they do have the right of engagement at the highest court in our land, they have no right to twist the narratives, to distort the truth to suit their emotional , tendentious fabric. They should let it go after they would have exhausted the judicial process. That is the most enlightened path. Anything else strains normative civility,” Shodipe-Dosunmu said in a statement.

“The failed interimists are now damaging and eclipsing the moderating middle. In their unguarded mouthing, in their misguided tantrums of ushering in a storm of cudgel and iron to settle scores, they put pressure on the moderating middle to join the fray , to insert themselves blindly without reflective candor. We must never dissipate the gains of the moment on the altar of ethnic usurpation.”

The APC chieftain opined that there is no perfect electoral system anywhere in the world, adding that Nigerian democracy is still growing.

He said: “From the Greek Agora to the Roman Capitol, from the British House of Commons to the American Congress, there is no such thing as a perfect electoral system. It is a continuous remolding , a reworking, a rebuilding, a rectifying and amending of observable flaws to enhance and strengthen the promotion of liberty.

“The Nigerian Democracy is still much inchoate, cradled in the susceptible flaws of infancy. But it is developing. It is maturing . It is eradicating the flaws of old, mastering the challenges of yesterday with new modernized tools.

“The last general elections were far superior in their integrity and probity to the earlier ones. Despite some rough edges in some narrow, limited spheres, the elections were credible, valid, legitimate in all basic parameters.”