TheCable

Festus Keyamo, the spokesperson of the Tinubu/Shettima presidential campaign council, has claimed that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP) are in search of court orders to disrupt the announcement of the presidential election results.

In a statement released on Monday, Kenyamo accused both parties of attempting to “scuttle our democracy and throw the country into constitutional crises”.

Earlier, Dino Melaye, PDP’s agent, had walked out of the national collation centre in Abuja alongside LP’s representative and some other parties.

The group pulled out of the exercise after insisting that results uploaded to the portal of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must be displayed before the exercise could continue.

Reacting to the development, Keyamo alleged that the walkout “is just a precursor to executing the plan” of using litigations to halt the announcement of results.

“We have it on good authority that the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party have perfected plans to finally scuttle our democracy and throw the country into constitutional crises by surreptitiously obtaining exparte court orders stopping the announcement of the Presidential Election results which they fear have gone against them,” the statement reads.

“The walk-out they staged today at the National Collation Center is just a precursor to executing the plan.

“Nigerians would recall that the June 12, 1993 debacle that brought Nigeria to its knees and caused our country international isolation was precipitated by a court injunction stopping the announcement of Presidential Election results. The court order was obtained by a certain Association for Better Nigeria headed then by one Chief Authur Nzeribe.

“This is exactly what Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi want to foist on this nation again because of their inordinate ambitions. This is not surprising because both candidates were nowhere to be seen when Asiwaju was fighting for the democracy we all enjoy today.

“However, we wish to draw the attention of Nigerians, the Judiciary and the world to the provisions of section 84 (15) of the Electoral Act which prohibits the grant of injunctions to stop the holding of elections (which includes the declaration of results). The section states: ‘Nothing in this section shall empower the courts to stop the holding of primaries or general elections under this Act pending the determination of a suit.’

“This has prompted their instructions to their campaign organisations, especially their spokespersons to continue to issue statements, making false claims of ‘victory’ when there is no single scientific basis for such claims.

“For instance, as outlandish as some of their claims of manipulation are, they have not pointed at one single presidential election result in any single unit in the whole country where they scored a particular figure with a result sheet duly signed by their agent that was subsequently changed at a Collation Centre. All we hear are sound bites of their spokespersons, huffing and puffing about winning the election just to whip up public sentiments to prepare the ground to reject the results when they are eventually released by INEC.

“For us, our position is very simple and straightforward: we wish to allow the legal process of declaring presidential election results to take place peacefully and in an orderly fashion. Asiwaju is not desperate, but is very confident of victory.”

Collation of votes for the presidential election is ongoing.