Atiku not in court for personal gain, says campaign council

The battle to retrieve ‘the real outcome’ of the February 25 presidential election will be sustained by Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, his media aides said on Friday.

Atiku, former Vice President of Nigeria recently inaugurated a 19-man legal team headed by Joe-Kyari Gadzama to challenge the declaration of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress as winner of the election.

Saturday PUNCH had earlier reported that the Independent National Electoral Commission declared Tinubu winner of the poll after scoring 8,794, 726 votes to beat Atiku (6,984,520) Peter Obi (6,101,533) and Rabiu Kwankwaso (1,496,687) of the PDP, Labour Party, and the New Nigeria People’s Party respectively.

Speaking with Saturday PUNCH on Friday, the media adviser to the former Vice President, Mr Paul Ibe, said the decision to contest the outcome of the presidential election was borne out of the need to strengthen democracy in Nigeria and not because of Atiku’s personal interest.

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According to him, his principal will walk the entire distance to challenge what he called, “INEC’s breach of its own rules and guidelines.”

He stressed that the era of tolerating impunity in the country was over.

“Has the real outcome of the exercise been shown to the people? Nigerians, home and abroad were excited at the prospect of a technologically driven election this year. Before the election, mock tests were conducted on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and the Chairman of the commission, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, expressed optimism that BVAS would work. He called it the game changer.”

“If billions of naira were released for the procurement of the BVAS, shouldn’t Nigerians ask question why the device was now compromised during the election? If results as were being announced by Yakubu had not been uploaded on INEC’s viewing portal, won’t the commission tell Nigerians what happened? These are the issues we are talking about today,” he said.

Also speaking, Special Adviser to Atiku Abubakar on Public Communications, Phrank Shaibu, said anyone expecting the PDP standard bearer to back out of the legal option must remember that the whole thing was about getting things right for the country.