Supreme Court verdict: ‘Struggle’ continues as long as I breathe — Atiku

•Recommends judicial, electoral reforms •It’s time to end your Presidential ambition – Presidency •Nigeria greater than your selfish ambition, APC tells Atiku

THE presidential candidate of People’s Democratic Party, PDP, in the February 25, 2023 election, Atiku Abubakar, has vowed to continue to deepen Nigeria’s democracy for as long as he lives.

Atiku, who made the vow at a briefing in Abuja yesterday, said in his first official reaction to the Supreme Court judgement, which upheld the election of President Bola Tinubu:  “As for me and my party, this phase of our work is done. However, I am not going away. For as long as I breathe, I will continue to struggle, with other Nigerians to deepen our democracy and rule of law and for the kind of political and economic restructuring the country needs to reach its true potential.

“That struggle should now be led by the younger generation of Nigerians, who have even more at stake than my generation.”

While expressing confidence that history would vindicate him for his various contributions and sacrifices for democracy to survive in Nigeria, the former vice president said Nigeria lost, with the decision of the Supreme Court.

He said:  “Someone asked me, 'what I would do if I lost my election petition appeal at the Supreme Court'.  In response, I said that as long as Nigeria wins, the struggle would have been worth the while. By that, I meant that the bigger loss would not be mine but Nigeria’s if the Supreme Court legitimizes illegality, including forgery, identity theft, and perjury.

“If the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, implies by its judgment that crime is good and should be rewarded, then Nigeria has lost and the country is doomed, irrespective of who occupies the presidential seat.

“If the Supreme Court decides that the electoral umpire, INEC, can tell the public one thing and then do something else in order to reach a corruptly pre-determined outcome, then there is really no hope for the country’s democracy and electoral politics.

I went to the Nigerian courts to seek redress

The former Vice President explained that with the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to award victory to Tinubu after the February 25, 2023, elections, he had the easier option to fold up and retreat after “the mandate banditry perpetrated by the APC and INEC,” but chose to seek judicial redress.

“I went to the Nigerian courts to seek redress. I even went to an American court to help with unravelling what our state institutions charged with such responsibilities were unwilling or unable to do, including unravelling the qualifying academic records of the person sworn in as our president and by implication, hopefully who he really is.

“I offered that evidence procured with the assistance of the American court to our Supreme Court to help it to do justice in this case. I give this background to underscore that what we are currently dealing with is bigger than one or two presidential elections and is certainly bigger than Atiku Abubakar.

“It is not about me; it is about our country, Nigeria. It is about the kind of society we want to leave for the next generation and what kind of example we want to set for our children and their children.

Implications of PEPC and Supreme Court judgments

Continuing, Atiku said:  “I leave Nigerians and the world to decide what to make of the Supreme Court’s unfortunate decision. But here’s my take. The judgments of the PEPC and the Supreme Court have very far-reaching grave implications, including the following.

One is the erosion of trust in the electoral system and our democracy.

“Nigerians witnessed as the National Assembly changed the electoral law to improve transparency in the process. Of particular importance was the introduction of modern technology to help eliminate the recurring incidents of electoral manipulation, particularly during the collation of results. 

Proposed judicial and electoral systems reforms

He added:  “Let me make a few proposals that I believe will help. We can urgently make constitutional amendments that will prevent any court or tribunal from hiding behind technicalities and legal sophistry to affirm electoral heists and undermine the will of the people. Our democracy must mean something; it must be substantive. Above all, it must be expressed through free, fair and transparent elections that respect the will of the people.

“Firstly, we must make electronic voting and collation of results mandatory. This is the 21st century and countries less advanced than Nigeria are doing so already. It is only bold initiatives that transform societies; Secondly, we must provide that all litigation arising from a disputed election must be concluded before the inauguration of a winner. This was the case in 1979. The current time frame between elections and inauguration of winners is inadequate to dispense with election litigations; Thirdly, in order to ensure popular mandate and real representation, we must move to require a candidate for President to earn 50 per cent +1 of the valid votes cast, failing which a run-off between the top two candidates will be held. Most countries that elect their presidents use this Two-Round System (with slight variations) rather than our current first-past-the-post syste and fourthly, in order to reduce the desperation of incumbents and distractions from governing and also to promote equity and national unity, we need to move to a single six-year term for President to be rotated among the six geo-political zones. 

''This will prevent the ganging up of two or more geo-political zones to alternate the presidency among themselves to the exclusion of other zones. INEC should be mandated to verify the credentials submitted to it by candidates and their parties and where it is unable to do so – perhaps because the institutions involved did not respond in time - it must publicly state so and have it on record.''

It’s time to end your Presidential ambition – Presidency

Reacting to Atiku’s press conference last night, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, in a statement, said: “Former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, unraveled on Monday at a press conference in Abuja where he finally found his voice after more than 96 hours to respond to his trouncing at the Supreme Court in a landmark judgment on his grossly incompetent election petition appeal.

“We were wrong to expect that Atiku at 77 would play the statesman and sportsman and accept, with equanimity, the verdict of the highest court and the people of Nigeria.

Instead, he unashamedly constituted himself into a demagogue and anarchist in the way and manner he sought to pull down and delegitimize all the institutions of State, all in a futile bid to achieve what he could not get via the ballot box.

At his press conference where he laboured, in vain, to once again manipulate public opinion and blame the judiciary for his self-inflicted defeat in the 25 February Presidential election, Alhaji Atiku launched a diatribe against the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and judiciary, particularly our apex court, for not bending the law and the constitution to satisfy his whims and caprices.

Atiku tried very hard to perfect his act of misinformation by seeking to lay claim to faux morality and higher ideals when in actual fact his entire life is antithetical to any higher ideals.”

“We want to tell Alhaji Atiku this: Nigeria is not doomed. It is only Atiku’s inordinate ambition to be President that is doomed. Nigeria is moving forward and set to achieve its manifest destiny as one of the most respected and successful nations of the world under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu.

“Contrary to Atiku’s gloomy submission on our democracy, we are excited to tell the world that our democracy is thriving and blossoming. It is the reason, for the first time, since 1999 the character of our National Assembly and its outlook reflect the diversity and plurality of the choices and preferences of voters as a rainbow coalition of different parties as opposed to the practice in the past where just two parties dominated the national parliament.’’

Nigeria greater than your selfish ambition, APC tells Atiku

On its part, the All Progressives Congress, APC, slammed the former Vice President for his continued denial of his defeat at the 2023 presidential election, saying it was time he gave up because the country is greater than his personal ambition.

National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mr Felix Morka, in a statement, added that for a serial election loser whose life ambition is to rule the country, the ruling party understands how pained and utterly distraught Atiku must be.

Morka said: “However, to continue to deny and disrespect the collective will of Nigerians, disparage the judiciary, incite rage and call our democratic institutions into question is beyond the pale.  

“Still bemoaning his electoral loss, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, earlier today, staged a press conference at which he delivered a long, windy, incoherent and preposterous speech unbefitting of a former Vice President.  

“In his foggy and contemptuous perspective, the Supreme Court ‘implies by its judgment that crime is good and should be rewarded.’ Atiku regurgitated his illusory claim that President Bola Tinubu did not win the February 25, 2023, presidential election. Rather, he soliloquized that they ‘showed irrefutable evidence of gross irregularities, violence and manipulations during the elections’, allegations that were roundly dismissed by the Presidential Election Petitions Court and the Supreme Court as unsubstantiated and unproven. Strikingly, nowhere in his long epistle of a press statement did Atiku state that he won the election, corroborating the courts’ finding and decision that he did not, in fact, win the election.’’