Controversies over the build-up to the 2023 presidential election continue to brew as a new report claims that the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, was specifically targeted.
The National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, had declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the February 25th polls.
According to him, Tinubu scored a total of 8,794,726 votes to win over 25 per cent of the votes cast in 30 states, more than the 24 states constitutionally required.
Yakubu also said Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came second with a total of 6,984,520 votes while Peter Obi came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
Both Atiku and Obi have challenged the results at the Presidential Election Tribunal on account of alleged substantial noncompliance with the Electoral Act and INEC guidelines, voter intimidation/ vote suppression, violence as well as result manipulation among other infractions.
However, the Labour Party has claimed that due to the intensity of Peter Obi’s challenge, he has become a target of state-sponsored intimidation, blackmail, threats, invasion of privacy and other acts of subterfuge aimed at forcing him to abandon his legal challenge.
A member of the LP Presidential Campaign Council, who pleaded anonymity, told Vanguard that the attacks against the Labour Party candidate started as soon as the campaigns commenced.
He said, “We have since been made aware of the orchestrated move by the state to sabotage our candidate starting from our campaigns.
“They tried entrapment by stationing all kinds of women at hotels where our candidate lodged during the campaigns that failed.
“They have been going through records of his financial dealings and bank accounts. They’ve found nothing incriminating.
“They tried bringing up the Panama papers that also failed to stick, then they resorted to the oldest trick in the book-wire tapping.”
Recall that the Chief Spokesperson of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, Dr Yunusa Tanko, had also revealed that Peter Obi has lately come under intense pressure to flee Nigeria.
He said, “Most unfortunately, in the past few weeks, Mr Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate in the February 25th, 2023 presidential election has been contacted by associates, elder statesmen, family and friends with concerns for his personal safety.
“These concerns have increased intensely in the last few days as immense pressure, has been mounted directly on Mr Obi to leave the country, no doubt, from sources allied to the All-Progressive Congress (APC) and its agents in the security services.
“ Mr Obi has been repeatedly and categorically told that he has a choice to leave Nigeria or face the prospect of being arrested on false charges of inciting insurrection in the country.
“It is difficult to fathom and regrettably unfortunate that state institutions have become part of a well calculated, deliberate and orchestrated campaign of calumny by the APC to discredit and delegitimize Mr Peter Obi and compel him to abandon his right to seek redress in court following the outcome of the last election which was adjudged both locally and internationally to have failed to meet any standard of credibility or fairness.”
Public affairs analyst and Executive Director of Civil Societies Legislative and Advocacy Centre, Auwual Musa Rafsanjani, expressed the view that citizens have a constitutionally guaranteed right to freely hold and express their opinions within the confines of the law.
He recalled that ahead of the 2015 elections, opposition political figures threatened to form a parallel government if the elections were rigged “Nobody accused them of committing treason.”
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