A founding member of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), Dr. Osita
Okechukwu has asked the opposition parties to accept President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s victory and blame Atiku Abubakar’s greed for their loss.
He said that as a Buharist who had experienced the pain of losing post-election litigations, he understood the grief of the People’s Democratic Party, (PDP) Labour Party, (LP) and Allied Peoples Movement, (APM) members at the outcome of the Presidential Election Petition Court, (PEPC)’s judgment.
Okechukwu, who spoke to journalists in Abuja shortly after the PEPT delivered its judgment, Wednesday night, noted that although the main opposition PDP had bright chances of bouncing back
through the 2023 presidential election, the political greed of the party’s
candidate, Atiku Abubakar, denied the party victory.
He noted that while he sympathizes with PDP, LP, and APM, the petitioners,
particularly supporters of PDP and LP should not blame the PEPC but
Abubakar, whose hubris and greed combined to deny them victory.
Okechukwu also noted that Atiku’s
failure to rise to the golden opportunity
and play a statesman by throwing support for his erstwhile running mate, Peter Obi orany other Southern Presidential candidate, divided the opposition party., adding, “Atiku dealt
PDP a huge blow from which it might
be difficult to recover.”
He dismissed claims that the petitioners
had maintained that President Bola Tinubu was not qualified to run and
allegations of irregularities in the
conduct of the election as well as
failure to electronically transmit results
in real time were fatal to the respondents’ case.
“Those intricate we bs could have been
resolved, if Atiku had obeyed the zoning
convention, and supported Peter Obi or any other Southern presidential
candidate, it could have simply
been a Southern bout.
“The Wike Masquerade couldn’t have
emerged.That would have meant that
the bulk of votes garnered could have been credited to PDP.
Atiku divided PDP votes irreparably, all the votes Labour Party garnered were from the party’s stronghold, minus voted
warehoused by the former Vice President, who naively forgot that
northern voters are one of the most sophisticated in the country, but
believed that northern electorate
would behave like children in a dormitory
waiting for directives on how to vote,”
he declared.
Okechukwu, who is also the Director
General of Voice of Nigeria ,(VoN),
remarked that President Tinubu deserves accolades for rescuing zoning conventions that guarantee equity, and natural justice between the North and south.
“Let me congratulate President Tinubu, for rescuing the zoning convention, a ligament binding north and south from
unprecedented assault.
“To be honest, my take is that the opposition lost the election the day, in 2022, when he, Abubakar trampled on the presidential zoning convention, which governed the 4th Republic
and was also embedded in
his party’s Constitution.
“Recall that Atiku earned accolades when he stormed out of the PDP
Convention in 2014 in protest that President Goodluck Jonathan was breaching the zoning convention.
“And, in 2018, Governor Nyesom Wike
hosted PDP Convention in Port Harcourt
and ensured that only northern presidential aspirants contested for the
presidential ticket as a way of honoring
the zoning convention.
So, it is obvious that when Atiku sacrificed statesmanship on the altar of narrow political ambition, one concluded
that he had wittingly or unwittingly fatally wounded the fabric of PDP.
“Going by the time worn, a divided house
cannot stand, Nigerians should recognise that Atiku by his greed denied PDP a possible victory.”
On the way forward, the APC chieftain suggested promulgation of a revised
Electoral Act that will resolve all evident ambiguities, by enthroning mandatorily only electronic accreditation and transmission of results.
“I subscribe to the idea that we should totally abolish manual collation of
results and make electronic
transmission of results mandatory. We also need to return to Justice Uwais ‘Hand book on Electoral Reform, which among other fine democratic tenets recommended how best to transparently recruit the INEC Chairman, Commissioners,and sundry officials
“With these altercations,Election Petitions will definitely be concluded
before the swearing-in of winners.
“Let us not forget that our democracy has witnessed tremendous advancement and keep in mind the fact
that democracy is not a revolution, but
a work in progress,” he stated.