- Asks NBC to sanction TV stations granting LP candidate access to denigrate free, fair election
President-elect, Bola Tinubu, has asked security agencies in the country to caution the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25, Presidential and National Assembly elections, Peter Obi, to stop making incendiary comments capable of throwing the nation into crisis.
He also asked the National Broadcasting Commission to caution television stations against granting access to Obi to delegitimise the presidential election.
Tinubu made the demands in a statement issued Friday night in Abuja and signed by the Director, Media and Publicity at his campaign council, Bayo Onanuga.
He said “The defeated Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, still goes around inflaming passions, spreading lies as if he is still campaigning for the highest office in the land, weeks after the exercise was concluded and a winner announced.
“We are worried about his recent media rounds on Arise TV and Channels TV, in which he made profoundly misleading, criminally false and inciting statements about the election that he lost woefully.
“We call on the security agencies to caution him from further making incendiary remarks, especially after he claimed he is challenging the results of the election in the tribunal.
“Asked on Arise TV about his loss, he derided the election, considered by many to be the best in our recent history. He described it recklessly as ‘probably the worst’, ‘wrong election’, ‘not God’s will’. In one moment, he likened the election to ‘robbery’.
Faulting Obi’s attempt to come across as a political scientist, Tinubu said “He also fleetingly wore the toga of a political scientist redefining democracy, which the world knows as government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
“According to Obi, ‘to win in democracy is to win the people. The declared winner, Bola Tinubu did not win- that is what we are challenging…’ Later, he clarified in his moments of sobriety, after leaving the studio, that what he wanted to challenge was the process of declaring the winner.
“On Channels TV few days later, Obi made the ridiculous claim about ‘his stolen mandate’, echoing the position of his unthinking mob of supporters, who believe that he won the election, because some sponsored polls made the claim before the election.
“We consider the claim by the former governor of Anambra as very fraudulent as he fell short of winning any mandate. He came third, not even second, losing by 2.6 million votes to President-elect Bola Tinubu, despite getting outrageously padded votes from his ethnic South East states.
“From the false narrative Obi has been pushing, he is the one trying to steal Bola Tinubu’s mandate, by appealing unashamedly to tribal and religious sentiments and by resorting to his sickening penchant for lying bold-facedly to snatch what does not belong to him.
“We consider Obi’s TV statements as prejudicial to the case he has filed and contemptuous of the court. Only a desperate politician like Obi will embark on his course of action: seeking justice in court and simultaneously embarking on a mission of blackmailing and intimidating the judiciary.
“He is trying to present himself before his case takes off in court as a helpless, cheated victim of the ‘system’, robbed of a mandate by INEC. He is trying to position himself as the candidate ‘who won the people’, who is loved by the people, going by his self-serving definition of democracy,” Tinubu stated.
Tinubu appealed to the judiciary not to be hoodwinked by the way and manner Obi had gone about his media blitz. “We hope the men and women of the judiciary will not fall for Obi’s cheap tactics and really examine the cases before them on merit and on the basis of substantial evidence presented.
“We also advise the NBC to caution TV houses giving Obi the platform to de-legitimise a free and fair election, when he has taken his case to court”.
