- Chides PDP for setting house on fire
- Claims INEC laboured under dark cloud of sabotage
From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Adamu, has said that Nigerians will live with the choice they have made in electing the party’s candidate and President-Elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu during last Saturday’s presidential election.
He condemned the conduct of the opposition parties, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), especially their “shameful attempt and walking out of the collation centre, describing it as the childish and highest level of political desperation.
Speaking during a press conference at the party’s national headquarters in Abuja, on Thursday, Adamu however extended the party’s hands of a friend to the opposition parties.
He emphatically claimed that the staff and management of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) laboured under a dark cloud of sabotage during the poll.
“As the national chairman of APC, our victory is a humbling but proud experience for me. The people have spoken loud and clear. Their judgement was informed and supreme. The choice they made is the choice they can live with. We salute them. We salute their free and fair decision.
“We accept the victory of our presidential candidate and the party with humility and gratitude to the Almighty God and the entire people of this great nation. We, of the National Executive Committee and the national working committee of our great party join millions of our compatriots in congratulating the President-Elect and indeed all our members in celebrating the resounding victory of our party at the polls,” he said.
On the conduct of the opposition, Adamu said: “I would be remiss if I fail to condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the shameful conduct of the leadership of PDP and the LP in their unwarranted attempts to sabotage the elections and throw the country into chaos and avoidable crisis. It is a pity that they take their loss so badly. They ought to be good sportsmen and women in the political arena.
“Their protest walk out from the collation centre was childish but clearly a calculated attempt to rubbish the elections and impugn the integrity of the electoral umpire. Their call for the cancellation of the elections over their unproven allegations of electoral fraud must be the height of diabolical desperation.
“All patriotic citizens of this country who value peace and unity of purpose must rise with one voice to condemn these elements who want to parade themselves in the public space as the guardians of our electoral system.
“Aided by some self-appointed guardians of our nation’s conscience, they wanted to turn the victory of our party into ashes in the mouths of all Nigerians and set the country up for global opprobrium. It is condemnable and unpatriotic and unworthy of men who ought to recognise that in a democracy respect for the right of the people to freely choose their leaders through an election is the fundamental pillar of that form of government.
“Nothing in our laws and the constitution gives aggrieved individuals and groups the right to abort the unequivocal choices freely made by the people in their wisdom. Power belongs to the people and the people must be allowed to exercise it in the best way they choose in instituting the government of their choice.
“Our laws provide channels for the redress of electoral grievances. We urge those who feel aggrieved to avail themselves of those channels to seek redress. To set the house on fire in pursuit of a rat is not an act of courage or patriotism. It stands condemnable.
“We are happy to see that the people have seen through their unpatriotic antics and rejected their attempts to set the country on fire. We commend the highly placed and patriotic former public officers who instantly rose up in defence of the conduct of the elections and the election results and condemned the saboteurs.
“They have once more risen to the challenge of saving our nation from a needless crisis. We salute them. We must learn to be good losers, not bad losers. It is the hallmark of good citizenship,” he said.
The ruling party boss also admitted; “We have all run the good race. The victory has gone to one man, but the race was not run by him alone. He won because we stood by him. He won because we, as members of the party were committed to his victory and the victory of our party at all levels in the general elections.
“He won because the electorate trust him and believe he has the capacity to heal the nation’s wounds and set it along the path of unity and prosperity. The people have trusted their weal and welfare to the able hands of the President-Elect and the Vice President-Elect.
“We have been through a gruelling experience in the hands of the doomsayers. We have pulled through in one piece and demonstrated once more that fortified by our patriotism and our duty to our nation, we will always give the lie to the doomsayers.
“The victory does not belong to the President-Elect and his political party alone. It also belongs to that poor woman who, against all odds and the current financial problems, still sacrificed her time and her little financial resource to go to her polling unit to cast her vote because she wants to have a say in who governs her and her country,” he said.
The former governor of Nasarawa state also thanked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for conducting a free, fair and credible election and the security agents for showing professionalism during the poll.
“The victory belongs to the security agencies who put their lives on the line and ensured the peaceful conduct of the election at all levels. It belongs to all Nigerians who collectively showed a determination to birth a new national leadership.
“It belongs especially to the chairman and the members of INEC. They laboured under a dark cloud of sabotage. INEC offices were torched in several states; its personnel were similarly attacked, but Mahmood Yakubu, the man who has done more than anyone else in that difficult office refused to be intimidated and be deflected from doing his duty to his country and his compatriots.
“Committed as he and the members of the commission were to free, fair, transparent, and credible elections, they found sustenance in the courage to serve the nation and its people and help the people institute a government of their choice. Our nation must remain grateful to them,” he declared.