Apologise to Nigerians, instead of appealing judgement, Mohammed tells PDP, Atiku, labour commends tribunal’s ruling

Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has asked the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate in the last general elections, Atiku Abubakar, to apologise to Nigerians instead of appealing Wednesday’s ruling of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.

He stressed that the apology becomes necessary in that the petition, which he described as frivolous, distracted the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

In a statement yesterday, he said while the PDP and Atiku reserve the right to pursue their petition to the highest level, they would be better served by dropping their desperation and realise that there was a limit to tomfoolery.

“Nigerians are tired of this orchestrated distraction, and will rather wish that the opposition, having lost at the polls and in court, will now join hands with the government to move the country forward.

“This is more so that the judgement validating the reelection of President Buhari was unanimous that the petition lacked merit, that the petitioners failed to prove any of the grounds upon which their case was anchored and that the President qualified to contest the poll,” he said.

Lai Mohammed said instead of casting aspersions on the judiciary with their poorly-framed reaction to the tribunal’s ruling, the PDP and its candidate should thank their stars that they were not being prosecuted for coming to court with a fraudulently-obtained evidence.

“It is intriguing that a party that trumpets the rule of law at every turn will present, in open court, evidence it claimed to have obtained by hacking into a supposed INEC server.

“Instead of threatening to go to the Supreme Court, driven more by ego than commonsense, they should be sorry for allowing desperation to overwhelm their sense of reasoning. Enough is enough,” he said.

He commended the tribunal for not only doing justice to the case but for explaining, in painstaking details that lasted hours, how it arrived at its judgement.

“We also thank Nigerians, who voted to reelect President Buhari for their continued support,” he added.

Meanwhile, organised labour commended the judgement of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, saying it was a manifestation of the country’s independent and impartial judiciary.

In a statement in Kaduna, General Secretary of Textile Workers Union (TWU) and National Executive Council member of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Issa Aremu, noted that decisions of the five-man panel in Abuja showed that the nation’s judiciary has come of age in objectivity, rigour and impartiality.

Aremu cited decisions that President Buhari eminently qualified to contest the February 23, 2019 presidential election and that Atiku Abubakar of PDP is a Nigerian citizen and not a Camerounian as “significantly balanced, sensible for ordinary Nigerian voters.”