“You can’t build peace on a faulty foundation,” Peter Obi says as he plans to challenge Tinubu’s victory in court
Barely 24 hours after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) issued a certificate of return to Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Nigeria’s President-elect on March 1, 2023, Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25, 2023, presidential election, has resolved to challenge the result in court.
“I am not going away. I know the court will do the right thing. Their children are involved; they would do the right thing,” he said in a press briefing on Thursday, March 2, 2023.
The 2023 presidential election was hotly contested by Bola Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), and Peter Obi of the Labour Party. Amidst multiple reports of irregularities and protests from other opposition parties calling for poll cancellation, INEC announced Tinubu who polled 8.7 million votes as the winner of the election.
On February 26, 2023, a Labour Party agent at the presidential election results collation centre in Lagos said that her party’s agent in Badagry Local Government area of Lagos signed the election results in the area at gunpoint. Agents of the Labour Party and PDP also walked out from the national collation centre in Abuja, saying the results being announced by the electoral body were not first uploaded to the INEC portal as required by the 2022 Electoral Act.
As results continue to tickle in on February 28, 2023, and it became clear that Tinubu will emerge winner, there were calls by members and supporters of APC on the internet for Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar to replicate President Goodluck Jonathan’s famous call to Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and congratulate Tinubu even before the final result was announced. Protests broke out in some parts of the country including Delta State and Abuja as aggrieved supporters of Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar decry the outcome of the election. However, Tinubu, in his acceptance speech on March 1, 2023, extended an olive branch to his opponents, calling on them to team up with him to build the nation together.
Peter Obi, who won Lagos State, was asked by journalists during the press briefing if he would, for the purpose of peace and in line with the Peace Accord signed by the presidential candidates on the eve of the election, join Tinubu’s government if approached by the president-elect who will be sworn-in as Nigeria’s President on May 29, 2023.
“I am challenging the process. You can’t build peace on a faulty foundation. I am challenging the faulty foundation, which has to be built on fairness,” Peter Obi said. Alleging that the process that produced the President-elect was flawed with irregularities, he said: “If you must answer His or Her Excellency, the process by which you got to that position must be excellent.”
The two-term governor of Anambra State assured his supporters that he is not going away and will reclaim his mandate.
Interestingly, the Labour Party Presidential candidate is not new to addressing his political challenges through the judiciary.
In 2003, Peter Obi contested in the Anambra State Governorship Election as a candidate for the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). However, his opponent, Chris Ngige of the People’s Democratic Party, was declared the winner of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). After nearly three years of litigation, the Court of Appeals on March 15, 2006, overturned the election and declared Peter Obi the winner. With that declaration, Peter Obi became the first Nigerian governor to be installed through the court. After seven months in office, Obi was impeached, but he successfully challenged his impeachment and was reinstated as the governor on February 9, 2007, by the Court of Appeal sitting in Enugu.
While Peter Obi appeared confident in his quest to prove his case in court, his vice presidential candidate expressed low confidence in the judiciary. On March 1, 2023, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed stated, “We are going to keep the struggle alive, irrespective of our very low confidence in the judiciary.”
