The Independent National Electoral Commission, the undisputed empire of our elections, has formally announced the results of the presidential election as well as those of the national assembly. It declared the presidential candidate of our party, APC, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the president-elect, having met and even exceeded the constitutional requirement that to win, a presidential candidate shall score at least 25 per cent of the votes cast in two-thirds of the states of the federation. He scored at least 25 per cent in 33 states of the federation. The commission has duly issued him with the certificate of return. It is a happy day for him, our party, and our country.
Jagaban is the informed choice of the electorate. He clearly won fair and square. I offer him my very hearty congratulations. Mr President-elect, with your victory, the people have also renewed the tenancy of our political party in Aso Rock. Ours is the party the people can trust.
As the national chairman of APC, our victory is a humbling but proud experience for me. The people have loud and clear. Their judgement was informed and supreme. The choice they made is the choice they can live with. We salute them. We salute their free and fair decision.
We accept the victory of our presidential candidate and the party with humility and gratitude to the almighty God and the entire people of this great nation. We, of the national executive committee and the national working committee of our great party join millions of our compatriots in congratulating the president-elect and indeed all our members in celebrating the resounding victory of our party at the polls.
We congratulate President Muhammadu Buhari for the peaceful conduct of the elections. He duly delivered on his promise to provide the enabling level playing field for all the political parties and their candidates. He stood for freedom of choice and action. His legacy of abiding by the rule of law shall be the hallmark of our party’s leadership in our dear country. He has cemented his place in our national history. Thank you, Mr President, for standing by the party and especially its presidential candidate.
We have all run a good race. The victory has gone to one man, but the race was not run by him alone. He won because we stood by him. He won because we, as members of the party, were committed to his victory and the victory of our party at all levels in the general elections. He won because the electorate trusted him and believed he had the capacity to heal the nation’s wounds and set it along the path of unity and prosperity. The people have entrusted their wealth and welfare to the able hands of the president-elect and the vice-president-elect.
We have been through a gruelling experience in the hands of the doomsayers. We have pulled through in one piece and demonstrated once more that fortified by our patriotism and our duty to our nation, we will always give the lie to the doomsayers.
The victory does not belong to the president-elect and his political party alone. It also belongs to that poor woman who, against all odds and the current financial problems, still sacrificed her time and her little financial resource to go to her polling unit to cast her vote because she wants to have a say in who governs her and her country.
The victory belongs to the security agencies who put their lives on the line and ensured the peaceful conduct of the election at all levels. It belongs to all Nigerians who collectively showed a determination to birth a new national leadership. It belongs especially to the chairman and the members of INEC. They laboured under a dark cloud of sabotage. INEC offices were torched in several states; its personnel were similarly attacked but Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the man who has done more than anyone else in that difficult office refused to be intimidated and be deflected from doing his duty to his country and his compatriots. Committed as he and the members of the commission were to free, fair, transparent, and credible elections, they found sustenance in the courage to serve the nation and its people and help the people institute a government of their choice. Our nation must remain grateful to them.
We thank the mass media for their role in the conduct of the elections. They too ran a good race and must share in the victory.
I congratulate the candidates of our rival political parties. Together, we ran a good race. Their loss is not a rejection of what they stand for by the people. It is in the nature of competitions among political parties that out of the many that offer themselves to serve the people, only one is chosen at any one time. We recognise the victors, but we do not recognise the vanquished. Our party extends its hands of patriotism to them. We enjoin them to join our party so that together, we shall take up the same challenges for which they offered their services.
In conclusion, I would be remiss if I fail to condemn in the strongest possible terms the shameful conduct of the leadership of PDP and the Labour Party in their unwarranted attempts to sabotage the elections and throw the country into chaos and avoidable crisis. It is a pity that they take their loss so badly. They ought to be good sportsmen and women in the political arena.
Their protest walk out from the collation centre was childish but clearly a calculated attempt to rubbish the elections and impugn the integrity of the electoral umpire. Their call for the cancellation of the elections over their unproven allegations of electoral fraud must be the height of diabolical desperation. All patriotic citizens of this country who value peace and unity of purpose must rise with one voice to condemn these elements who want to parade themselves in the public space as the guardians of our electoral system.
Aided by some self-appointed guardians of our nation’s conscience, they wanted to turn the victory of our party into ashes in the mouths of all Nigerians and set the country up for global opprobrium. It is condemnable and unpatriotic and unworthy of men who ought to recognise that in a democracy respect for the right of the people to freely choose their leaders through an election is the fundamental pillar of that form of government. Nothing in our laws and the constitution gives aggrieved individuals and groups the right to abort the unequivocal choices freely made by the people in their wisdom. Power belongs to the people and the people must be allowed to exercise it in the best way they choose in instituting the government of their choice.
Our laws provide channels for the redress of electoral grievances. We urge those who feel aggrieves to avail themselves of those channels to seek redress. To set the house on fire in pursuit of a rat is not an act of courage or patriotism. It stands condemnable.
We are happy to see that the people have seen through their unpatriotic antics and rejected their attempts to set the country on fire. We commend the highly placed and patriotic former public officers who instantly rose up in defence of the conduct of the elections and the election results and condemned the saboteurs. They have once more risen to the challenge of saving our nation from a needless crisis. We salute them. We must learn to be good losers, not bad losers. It is the hallmark of good citizenship.
May God bless Nigeria; may he bless the choices the people have made and may peace and unity reign in our dear nation.
Being text of a Victory Statement by the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Senator (Dr.) Abdullahi Adamu, CON, Turakin Keffi
