The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has reacted to a claim by the candidate of the major opposition, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar that official results from the server of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) showed he (Atiku) won President Muhammadu Buhari by over 1.6 million votes in the February 23 presidential election.
The party (APC) said both the PDP and its candidate are suffering from post-election depression.
The ruling party said this in a statement by its publicity secretary, Lanre Issa-Onilu, on Wednesday while reacting to the claim by the PDP.
The PDP and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, in a petition filed on Monday, said it won the February 23 election with about 1.6 million votes to defeat President Muhammadu Buhari.
The party claimed that the computer server of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) computer server revealed this to it.
The petition, relying on 50 sets of documents, was filed before the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja against INEC, Atiku and the APC respectively.
On February 27, INEC declared that Buhari won the election with 15,191,847 votes to defeat Atiku, who polled 11,262,978 votes.
But the petitioners stated in their 139-page petition that “from the data in the 1st respondent’s (INEC’s) server…the true, actual and correct results” from “state to state computation” showed Atiku polled a total of 18,356,732 votes to defeat Mr Buhari whom they said scored 16,741,430 votes.
The ruling party said this claim by the opposition is ridiculous.
“Judging by Atiku and PDP’s recent utterances and actions, it is now clear that they have slipped into severe depression and post-defeat hallucination that have left many Nigerians questioning their current state of mind,” the APC said through its spokesperson.
“The most ridiculous is his claim that the server of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) indicated he ‘won’ the Presidential Election by 1.6million votes.”
The APC said since the outcome of the Presidential Election, the PDP and Atiku had engaged in “a series of circus shows to cheer up their crestfallen and disillusioned members.”
It said the PDP was only trying to discredit a credible presidential electoral process.
The party also said Atiku’s continuous reference to the election commission’s server is a cause for concern.
“Indeed, Atiku’s constant reference to the INEC server should raise concerns as it is becoming apparent that he and the PDP are up for some dastardly activities that are targeted at jeopardizing the INEC database and internal storage system.”
The APC urged INEC to be at alert. It said Nigerians had seen through “the devious schemes aimed at thwarting their will and consequently, the majority of the voters handed them a harsh verdict which remains sacrosanct.”