I AM not a lawyer, so my argument here may not necessarily pass the test of legal scrutiny. I am also not good with figures, having failed maths with honours at the school certificate level. But although I didn’t study history in school, my memory is relatively good, and I want to rely on it to interrogate Waziri Atiku Abubakar, the defeated Presidential candidate of the PDP in the just concluded Presidential election, as to why he would not be tired of ridiculing himself, by absurdly engaging in laughable arbitrations.
Every time he loses at the poll, he engages in absurd arbitration, and he seems to be a frequent loser. Those familiar with the meaning of logic say, it is reasoning conducted according to the strict principles of validity. Validity of facts, validity of certitude and the validity of common sense.
Since 1999, when Atiku Abubakar became the PDP candidate after the primary election, and eventually emerged as the de facto winner of the Adamawa gubernatorial election, before he was nominated by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as his Vice President, Atiku’s sojourn in elections have constantly been visited by failure. Every attempt he made thereafter, is returned with a certificate of loss. Someone wrote and I copied, thus:
1.1993- Atiku contested.
2.1999- Atiku contested.
3.2003- Atiku contested.
4.2007 – Atiku contested.
5.2011 – Atiku contested.
6.2015 – Atiku contested.
7.2019 – Atiku contested.
8.2023 – Atiku still contested.
Ladies and gentlemen, we hereby declare Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Contestant General of the Federal Republic – CGFR.
In all the contests above, Atiku went home dissatisfied, and always rushed to the court calling for an arbitration. At the end of the day, the arbitration would be adjudged absurd and groundless. Atiku Abubakar ran unsuccessfully for President of Nigeria six times, in 1993, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2023. He ran in the Social Democratic Party presidential primaries in 1993, but lost to Moshood Abiola and Baba Gana Kingibe. He ran against Goodluck Jonathan and lost. He ran against Umaru Musa Yar’adua and lost. He ran against Buhari and lost.
Last week’s Presidential election was Atiku’s latest stop-off in this endless journey of election failures, where he contested against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and seventeen other candidates. At the end of the exercise, INEC, the electoral umpire, declared Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the candidate of the country’s ruling party, APC, as the authentic winner of the election. Along with Atiku Abubakar, Asiwaju defeated 16 other candidates who took part in the election, by scoring a total of 8,794,726 votes, the highest of all the candidates, thus meeting the first constitutional requirement to be declared the winner. Tinubu did not stop there, he also scored over 25 per cent of the votes cast in 30 states, more than the 24 states constitutionally required.
According to the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, who announced the final results, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP came second with a total of 6,984,520 votes, while Peter Obi of the LP came a distant third.
As expected, Atiku Abubakar rejected the results, saying, “The weekend election was neither free nor fair. Preliminary assessments indicate that it is the worst conducted elections since the return to democratic rule. The manipulation and fraud that attended this election are unprecedented in the history of our nation. I can still not understand why the electoral umpire was in such a hurry to conclude collation and announcement of the result, given the number of complaints of irregularities.
Irregularities of bypassing of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS), failure of uploading to the IREV, unprecedented cancellations and disenfranchisement of millions of voters in breach of the Electoral Act and the commission’s own guidelines. It was indeed a rape of democracy”-Atiku.
Along with his co-loser, Peter Obi of the Labour party, Atiku had since approached the Court of Appeal, which agreed to grant them leave, to access the sensitive materials used for the Presidential election. The appellate Court, which also serves as the Presidential Election Tribunal, ordered INEC to allow them access to all sensitive materials deployed for the February 25 Presidential election.
In something that looks like the behaviour of a man acting on the impulse of his own personal whim, rather than one using the instinct of reasoning, the same Atiku Abubakar, along with the leadership of the PDP, stormed the headquarters of INEC in Abuja, yesterday, Monday, demanding the cancellation of the presidential election. This is after the court has commenced attending to his complaint. What else is needed to establish arbitrariness in Atiku’s actions, that are constantly coming with abundant absurdities?
The good thing is that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a man tailored to rise appropriately to such challenges. He has since announced his readiness to meet Atiku and whoever is dissatisfied with the result of the election in court. A legal team had since been constituted, comprising 12 Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), who would face Atiku’s lawyers in court. And the message would be as usual, viz- there are absurdities in Atiku’s abundant arbitrations.
Ibrahim is the director, publicity for the APC.