The PUNCH reports that Nigerians across the country filed out on Saturday to elect Buhari’s successor. Tinubu, a former Lagos State governor is the APC flagbearer while for vice president Atiku Abubakar is the PDP presidential candidate.
Other major contenders include Peter Obi and Musa Kwankwaso of the Labour Party and the New Nigeria Peoples Party respectively.
There had been several unverified election results online with several party supporters claiming that their candidates are leading others in Saturday’s presidential poll.
But in a statement by the PDP PCC’s Director of Strategic Communications, Dele Momodu, on Sunday, the council accused Tinubu of “dangerous publication unilaterally awarding an impossible victory to the APC”.
According to Momodu, Tinubu owns the said newspaper.
He claimed that contrary to the reports, Tinubu remains the only mainstream candidate whose home base of South West was decimated by opposition parties.
The statement read, “Only yesterday, we all saw how thugs of the APC Chieftains and his allies took over the streets of Lagos burning ballot boxes and documents and generally misbehaving to disenfranchise the determined electorates. Despite all of these ugly attempts at stealing victory, the APC suffered its worst cataclysmic loss in most of the polling centers in Lagos.
“The same happened in Kano. Incapable of ever being sobered by the crushing humiliation in its traditional territories, we woke up this morning to read about the pathetic and illegal lies cooked up by the Tinubu media goons.
“Tinubu remains the only mainstream candidate whose home base of South West was decimated by opposition parties in Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Osun, and Ekiti. Most of the Northern Governors he also expected to help him garner votes in the Northern regions failed spectacularly to deliver the badly needed votes. He failed in the South East and South-South.
“The only candidate with the national spread is the PDP Presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. But as a responsible citizen and respected statesman, he will never rush to the media to claim his well-deserved victory and glory after a long and torturous journey.
“We hereby call on INEC and the Federal Government to cage these troublesome APC Chieftains. We have all been witnesses to their unruly behaviour as they did everything to bully and blackmail President Muhammadu Buhari in order to chicken out of the currency swap policy.
“We also witnessed how they practically intimidated the President to the extent of forcing him to publicly display who he voted for in yesterday’s elections.
“It was quite a bizarre, unfortunate, and unprecedented scene to watch. We advise the President to find the courage to call the bluff of these desperate politicians who feel they can buy the whole of Nigeria.”
