PDP, Atiku Should Apologise to Nigerians Instead of Appealing Judgment, Says Lai Mohammed

PDP, Atiku Should Apologise to Nigerians Instead of Appealing Judgment, Says Lai Mohammed

By Olawale Ajimotokan in Abuja

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has called on the PDP and its presidential candidate in the last elections, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar to apologise to Nigerians for causing the Buhari Administration orchestrated distraction with a frivolous election petition, instead of appealing the ruling of Wednesday’s Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.

Mohammed made the demand in a statement issued in St Petersburg, Russia, on Thursday.

While noting that though the PDP and Atiku have the right to pursue their petition to the highest level, the minister appealed to them to drop the toga of desperation by realising that there is a limit to tomfoolery.

”Nigerians are tired of this orchestrated distraction, and will rather wish that the opposition, having lost at the polls and in court, will now join hands with the government to move Nigeria to the next level.

”This is more so that the judgement validating the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari was unanimous that the petition lacked merit, that the petitioners failed to prove any of the grounds upon which their case was anchored and that President Buhari is eminently qualified to contest the poll,” Mohammed said.

The five-man Presidential Election Tribunal headed by Justice Mohammed Garba had in a unanimous decision thrown out Atiku and PDP’s petition challenging Buhari’s reelection for lack of merit.

Throwing a dart at Atiku and his party, Mohammed said instead of casting aspersion on the judiciary with their poorly-framed reaction to the ruling of the tribunal, both the PDP and Atiku should be thanking their stars that they are not being prosecuted for coming to court with a fraudulently-obtained evidence.

”It is intriguing that a party that trumpets the rule of law at every turn will present, in open court, evidence it claimed to have obtained by hacking into a supposed INEC server. Don’t they realise this is a criminal act for which they are liable? Instead of threatening to head to the Supreme Court, driven more by ego than commonsense, they

should be sorry for allowing desperation to overwhelm their sense of reasoning. Enough is enough,” Mohammed said.

He saluted the tribunal for not only doing justice to the case but for explaining, in painstaking details that lasted over nine hours, how it arrived at its judgement.

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