Two steps Atiku has taken to reclaim his mandate
The veteran presidential aspirant, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has taken some steps to reclaim his mandate from Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the new president-elect.
The ex vice president attempted for the sixth time to occupy the office of the president. But he couldn’t withstand the pressure and popularity of the All Progressives Congress’s Bola Tinubu, who polled close to 9 million votes to beat Atiku and others.
The ex vice president, Atiku, believes that he won the election as against the declaration made by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) which argued that Tinubu is the validly and duly elected president of the country.
The PDP’s candidate has written to the electoral body to inspect the sensitive electoral materials. The materials included the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, which is popularly known as BVAS, the form EC8A SERIES (Results sheet), stamps and the ballot papers.
The electoral body had to postpone the 11 March gubernatorial election when the PDP and Labour Party dragged it to court over BVAS. INEC wanted to reconfigure the machine for the governorship and State house of assembly elections.
The Court of Appeal had earlier ordered INEC to allow Atiku to inspect the materials used on 25 February. But the commission is reportedly dragging its feet. Hence, the PDP’s candidate has written a letter through his legal counsel, Joe-Kyari Gadzama.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has also led a protest to the INEC secretariat in Abuja. The candidate led a host of other PDP’s echelons including Iyorchia Ayu, Aminu Tambuwal, Dino Melaye among others to the secretariat.
His argument has been that the electoral commission rigged the election in favour of Bola Tinubu of the APC. Atiku also lamented that the commission didn’t follow due processes including uploading of results to the portal.
Mr. Dino Melaye, the PDP’s agent at the collation centre of INEC in Abuja, had walked out while the exercise was ongoing. He claimed irregularities which he couldn’t immediately prove. Shortly after the declaration, the call for protest came up.
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