Diran Onifade, the Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council's Head of Media and Communications, speaks with AYOOLA OLASUPO on matters highlighted by the February 25 presidential and legislative elections.
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Your coalition disagreed with the announcement of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress as the presidential election winner; do you believe that decision may still be reversed, given the uproar it has caused?
Yes, that is why the law requires you to go to the tribunal if you have solid grounds to suspect you have been defrauded in an election. That is the law, and we follow it. We have a case, so we will debate it in front of the courts, and we are hopeful that they will see things
our way since we believe we have been deceived. Injustice is a rapid condition for a lack of peace, and justice is a quick condition for it. In reality, it is injustice that can lead to the breakdown of peace.
The APC has claimed win, the PDP has claimed victory, and the LP has also claimed victory; what makes you believe it will go your way?
INEC breached its own regulations, and every political party believes that the election
was illegitimate because of the manner INEC conducted it. The outcomes are available to all political parties. The polling unit results were not used to determine the winner. It was something else entirely. So, based on the actual election results, we are certain of victory.
During the INEC collation of results, Ndi Kato, the spokesman for the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, sounded the alarm about result tampering and that some people were altering the results; what did you observe?
We all saw it. The results that were submitted to the situation room by the polling agents of each political party were different from what INEC used. What was eventually used to collate in many cases were different. We have been seeing on the Internet copies of results that were supposedly uploaded and how the results were tampered with. The exercise was okay at the level of voting but the collation was something else. That was because of the gaps INEC left. That election was a mess.
No matter how bad the election was, the Supreme Court has never annulled a presidential election in Nigerian history. Why do you believe it will be different this time?
There will always be a first time for everything. Maybe they've never had a cause to do so before, but there's always a first time. I refer to, when Peter Obi faced impeachment as governor for the first time, he went back to court and battled. When he was deceived, he was impeached, and the court found in his favor three years later.
As a result, there is always a first time. What occurred in this election was far too obvious.
The entire globe witnessed it. The degree of scrutiny was unparalleled. There is a mountain of proof. This was robbed in broad daylight. They were thieving in front of everyone since the entire world was watching.
Others claim that Mr. Peter Obi could not have won since he does not have as much influence in the North as he has in the South; what are your thoughts on this?
During the election, this was their permutation, and they will be astonished. They said we lacked organization and that there were just four persons tweeting in a room.
Ultimately, after all the machinations, the margin between him and the individuals pronounced the election winners was only two million votes. They claim he (Peter Obi) lacks structure, but how can someone without structure come so near to the APC and PDP in a national election?
We arrived to Lagos and defeated Lagos politics' godfather. They couldn't even touch it. What, after all, is the structure? They have constructed a criminal framework in order to perpetuate themselves in power in order to perpetually supervise over our shared wealth and perpetually preserve to themselves the resources that belong to over 200 million people. We won the election, and we want to produce the proof in court. Without any framework, Peter Obi rocked Nigeria.
The reluctance of INEC to upload results was noted as a key defect in the election, although INEC blamed it on technical difficulties. Do you believe what happened was sabotage, an inevitable error, or a lack of preparation on the part of the commission?
They must have known what they were doing because so many other individuals utilize this network for their businesses and it never jams. The number of individuals on the network you used to reach me at this time is more than the number of places where results were being updated on that Saturday, and technology handles this call. Why didn't technology take care of that one?
Why were there no issues when downloading House of Representatives and Senate results, yet there were during the presidential election? Come on, we're not stupid!
What did you find most alarming about the election's behavior as a voter?
It should have been the finest election in Nigerian history in terms of organization, since voters had more knowledge and were more informed about the process than ever before. To a considerable extent, voters and election officials were well prepared, and everyone understood what they were doing. Everything went swimmingly until the moment of collation. Your rule states that polling unit results will be uploaded to the site, however this has not occurred.
People complained, but the INEC chairman stated that we should finish the process and then evaluate it. He finished the procedure without evaluating it, declared the winner, and the review has yet to take place. How does a man make such a big promise as Prof Mahmood Yakubu and then not keep it? He promised the world that the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System would be revolutionary, but what did we witness?
Is there an effort by the Labour Party, as a party that is increasingly gaining power in national politics, to mobilize all those who won on the party's platform for some synchronicity and consistency of purpose as they prepare to occupy their different offices?
Naturally, if you've been paying attention, Peter Obi had dinner with the candidates for both the Senate and the House of Representatives a few days ago, and this practice will continue.
According to rumors, the Labour Party employed over 25 Senior Advocates of Nigeria to challenge Tinubu's election in court. Are they being compensated or did they really provide their services for free?
Since this is not the first occasion that attorneys have worked pro gratis, I believe the lawyers should respond to the inquiry. It is appropriate for their job duties. I don't see anything suspicious about their working for free.
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