Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Culture and Information, on Thursday asked the Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate in the last presidential election, Atiku Abubakar to apologize to Nigerians for distracting Buhari and his administration with a “frivolous election petition”, instead of appealing the ruling of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
His requests come barely 24 hours after the presidential election petition tribunal gave its verdict and dismissed the petitions filed by the PDP and Abubakar.
Justice Garba in his ruling said the petitioners failed to prove their petition beyond a reasonable doubt that Buhari was not re-elected by popular votes.
Atiku Abubakar and his party had through one of his lawyers, said that he would appeal Wednesday’s ruling.
The PDP also described the ruling as a perversion of justice, vowing to appeal the judgement.
Lai Mohammed in a statement in Abuja said although the PDP and her candidate reserve the constitutional right to pursue their petitions to the highest legal level, they will better if they drop their “toga of desperation and realising that there is a limit to tomfoolery”.
”Nigerians are tired of this orchestrated distraction. Nigerians would rather wish that the opposition party, having lost at the polls and in court, will now join hands with the government to move Nigeria to the next level.
”This is more so that the judgement validating the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari was unanimous that the petition lacked merit, that the petitioners failed to prove any of the grounds upon which their case was anchored and that President Buhari is eminently qualified to contest the poll.
”It is intriguing that a party that trumpets the rule of law at every turn will present, in open court, evidence it claimed to have obtained by hacking into a supposed INEC server. Don’t they realize this is a criminal act for which they are liable? Instead of threatening to head to the Supreme Court, driven more by ego than commonsense, they should be sorry for allowing desperation to overwhelm their sense of reasoning. Enough is enough,” he said.
