Presidential Election: Peter Obi Says He Is Challenging The Process And Not The Outcome

Last month, Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Tinubu, as the winner of the presidential election held on February 25. However, the Labour Party’s (LP) candidate, Obi, challenged the result in court, alleging irregularities by the electoral commission.

The court of appeal granted Obi access to all the sensitive materials used by INEC for the election. However, LP accused INEC of not allowing Obi’s lawyers access to the materials despite the court ruling.

During an interview with Arise TV, Obi stated that he was not interested in challenging the “outcome” of the election, but he wants INEC to open up itself to scrutiny from Nigerians. He believes that INEC, as a public institution, should be open to scrutiny, and people should have access to the materials used to arrive at the election result.

Obi reiterated the importance of the process of doing things and arriving at every destination, stating that the process of how people come into office is far more fundamental than what they do afterward. Therefore, he wants the process by which INEC arrived at their declaration to be challenged.

Obi also disagreed with the narrative being pushed by some traditional rulers and religious leaders that the outcome of the recent polls, as pronounced by INEC, was the wish of God for the country. He stated that accepting wrongdoing and accepting what is unacceptable is the problem of Nigeria, and using God’s name in vain is not what God is saying. According to him, the country has laws guiding the conduct of elections, and it is not the wish of God that they should be violated.

Obi believes that God’s will is for people to do the right thing, and in the end, it will be well. He questions whether it is God’s wish that 133 million Nigerians are poor, 95 million Nigerians are living in absolute poverty, children are kidnapped, and the country has the highest infant mortality rate due to the collapsed Primary Health Care. He argues that conducting the wrong election and stealing are not God’s wishes.

In the February 25 presidential election, APC’s Tinubu was declared the winner by INEC’s chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, beating the Peoples Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar and LP’s Obi, who came second and third, respectively.