The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has accused the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of insulting the intelligence of Nigerians with its constant refrain on the electronic transmission of results of the February 28 elections and a non-existent server for collation of results.
This, according to the group, is in spite of the insistence by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that results for all the elections it conducted this year were collated manually, based on the laws of the land.
BMO said in a statement signed by its Chairman, Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary, Cassidy Madueke that the INEC server claim is a ploy by PDP and its Presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar to cast doubt in the mind of the average Nigerian on President Muhammadu Buhari’s electoral victory and not necessarily to win at the Presidential election tribunal.
“We at BMO have seen how the opposition had, even before proceeding to the tribunal, taken its claims of electoral victory based on INEC server results to the public domain.
“And even after the petition was filed, it sustained its position that it won the February election on the basis of results it claimed were fed by electoral officials into the server, through proxies on social and traditional media, until the commission was finally forced to speak out.
“Now that the tribunal has began hearing the case, the manner PDP and its supporters have continually shared videos and posts on social media, and digging up old news reports as well as spreading fake news items show that there is an element of mischief that undiscerning Nigerians need to be aware of.
“The height of it was the fake news attributed to former INEC Chairman Attahiru Jega that the commission transmitted results electronically in 2015 to a central server even though there was no enabling law empowering it to do so.
“Professor Jega has since denied this claim and we wonder what other ridiculous extent opposition elements are prepared to go to in order to insult the intelligence of Nigerians,” it added.
BMO noted that all of these show that PDP is only bent on destroying the legitimacy of the President’s overwhelming electoral victory with a claim its leaders know cannot stand legal scrutiny.
The group said: “Here is a political party that has no qualms in producing alternative results showing that only two Presidential candidates secured votes in an election that had 71 other candidates and claimed that it had statements from electoral officials who transmitted results from polling units to a central server.
“But it is surprising that it has not questioned the outcome of National Assembly elections held on the same day across the country which showed that President Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) won an overwhelming majority in the two chambers.
“We at BMO wonder what figures their server result showed, or do PDP and Atiku want us to believe that the results of an election that was held simultaneously with that of the President were not transmitted to the same server they said was used to collate results?
“The truth, like INEC has said, is that it has always had servers but there was no provision for electronic transmission of results in the Constitution, the Electoral Act as well as in the guidelines used for the 2019 elections.
“Many PDP supporters who have accepted that their party is filled with habitual liars have seen through the latest lie and have accepted that the server claim cannot stand real legal scrutiny at the tribunal.”
BMO consequently wants the party leaders and its Presidential candidate to stop living in denial about the outcome of an election that the President won with a margin that is more than the combined population of Mauritius, Swaziland and Equatorial Guinea.
“We know that a defeat with a victory margin of close to 4 million is too much for PDP and Atiku Abubakar to take, but we also know that they have yet to go through the five stages of grief. These are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
“We urge them to consider national interest as they go through the stages of grief over an election they had thought they could win after securing the support of those who considered themselves the owners of Nigeria,” BMO added.