From Geoffrey Anyanwu, Enugu
The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has said that his party has no partnership deal with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Mr Obi disagreed with some religious and traditional leaders who were of the opinion that those of them contesting the declaration of the All Progressives Congress (APC candidate, Bola Tinubu as President-Elect by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), should discontinue and accept it as the will of God, insisting that wrongdoing should not be called the will of God.
The LP candidate, who appeared on a national television programme on Monday, said what they had together with PDP was the challenge of a wrong process.
“There is no partnership between Labour Party and the PDP. Both of us are challenging a process that is wrong. The process is wrong and we are challenging it because we’re all participants. It’s like several people are involved in a competition and it goes wrong and they come together and said it happened. There are so many court challenges all over the world where maybe somebody had raped one woman, she went to court, and several other women who have been raped by the same man came out. They are not acting jointly but because they have been victims of the same man,” Mr Obi said.
Reminded that both parties were claiming victory in the election, Obi said: “No problem, that is why we want to check the process, it is now the process that will say who actually, rightly received the highest number of rightful votes cast in the said elect because what is important is who received the highest number of rightful votes cast in the election and who has the spread.
“If we do the right things…, what we are claiming now is because of the confusion that was deliberately created by INEC. If they’d done the right things we won’t be here, nobody will be arguing.
“As I said, I have my respect for Atiku, and my respect for him remains as long as I live, he’s my respected elder brother but on the issue of Nigeria, we are two different candidates. I’m committed to a new Nigeria, committed to doing things differently and my commitment is total. But my commitment does not in any way affect my respect for him or Tinubu, I remain respectful to them.”
On the views of some religious and traditional leaders, the candidate said: I am very respectful to prominent Nigerians especially the church leaders, traditional rulers and I think they should be respected for what they represent in our society but I disagree with them. What they are actually preaching is the problem of Nigeria. the problem of Nigeria is accepting wrongdoing, accepting what is unacceptable, that is using God’s name in vain. That is not what God said, God said do not use my name in vain. So what they are saying is not God’s wish, is not God’s plan for Nigeria. so why don’t we accept that the 133 million Nigerians who are poor is God’s wish? God’s wish is when you do the right thing and in the end, it is done.
“This election was dedicated and planned and we have clear laws about the conduct of the election. If it were followed, if the results were uploaded from polling units as said to the saver, we won’t be here and I won’t be talking about it. It would have been concluded in a matter of hours without anybody arguing about it.
“But it is not God’s wish when you do the wrong thing, it is not God’s wish that you go and rob a train and make money and start sharing it. This is what is killing the country, people come here take public money and go and give it to people in the church and they said it is God’s wish and they are giving them titles in the church and all places. That is all we are fighting, that is what we want to stop, we want God’s wish to be truly God’s wish. What are we teaching the young ones, that it is God’s wish that you steal, that it is God’s wish that you conduct a wrong election?”
