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His_Eminence 
 Rt. Rev S. B. J. Oshoffa
Prophet, Pastor & Founder
CCC Worldwide
(1909-1985)


Imeko City Cathedral

 
 

Yar'Adua wins, to succeed Obasanjo 2007 ElectionText Box:     By Bolade Omonijo, Sam Eyoboka, Emmanuel Aziken, Tony Edike, Ben Agande & Olasunkanmi Akoni Posted to the Web: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 Sorry, your browser does not support floating frames * Obasanjo admits to lapses in polls * Worst elections ever, ANPP, AC * Election fraught with fraud —Gani * Okotie rejects results * Buhari rules out court option ABUJA — KATSINA State Governor and presidential flag-bearer of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, is to replace President Olusegun Obasanjo on May 29, according to the result of last Saturday’s election released yesterday. Professor Maurice Iwu, the Chief Returning Officer for the election, said Governor Yar’Adua got 24,638,063 of the 34 million votes cast. He was followed by ANPP’s Muhammadu Buhari with 6,605,063 and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of Action Congress (AC) who got 2,637,848 votes. General Buhari, Atiku’s AC, Chris Okotie of Fresh Party and others immediately rejected the result. But, President Olusegun Obasanjo said whatever lapses noticed during the elections were not enough to nullify them, while the President-Elect said he was humbled by his victory. Others candidates gotb the following votes: AC - 2,637,848 votes;  ADC - 50,849 votes;  APS - 22,409 votes;  ANPP - 6,605,299 votes;  ALP - 22,409 votes;  APGA - 155,947 votes; AD - 89,241 votes;  BNPP - 11,705 votes; CPP - 14,270 votes;  DPP - 289, 204 votes; Fresh - 74,490 votes;  HDP 28,519 votes; MMN - 4,309 votes, NAC - 5,752 votes; NCP - 8,239 votes; NDP - 21,974 votes; NMDP - 5,664 votes; NUP - 4,255 votes; ND - 5,408 votes; NNPP - 21,665 votes; NPC - 35,771 votes; PDP - 24,638,63 votes; PMP - 24,124 votes; PPA - 608,803 votes; RPN - 13,566 votes However, soon after the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the returning officer of the election, Prof. Maurice Iwu, announced the results, agents of the ANPP and AC candidates kicked, saying the results were cooked. Chief Tom Ikimi, the AC agent, said the collation of the results had only gone midway with 13 states so far declared before Prof. Iwu proceeded to declare what he described as concocted results. The ANPP agent, Admiral Lanre Amosun (rtd.), speaking separately said the results were still being collated as the INEC chairman made his announcement. The declaration was held under water-tight security with agents drafted from the Presidential Guard to enforce security around the one-storey building used as collation centre for the presidential election. Before he commenced the declaration at about 2.04 p.m., Prof. Iwu looked unsettled. Following the declaration of Governor Yar'Adua as President-Elect, Chief Ikimi, the AC agent, immediately repudiated the results. As he gave his dissent within the hall where the INEC chairman made the declaration, the Security Officer to the INEC chairman came in to stop the briefing by Chief Ikimi. Obasanjo admits to lapses, blames all political parties President Obasanjo who admitted that lapses characterized the presidential elections, however, said they were not enough to nullify the outcome as they represented the general wishes of people of the country. In a nationwide broadcast, President Obasanjo advised those who were aggrieved by the outcome of the elections to seek legal redress and urged the judiciary to expeditiously dispose of the cases before them before the May 29 handover date. The President admitted that lapses such as the late arrival of electoral materials, snatching of ballot boxes and in some cases violence marred the election and dismissed perpetrators of such acts as enemies of democracy. The president accused all the political parties including the PDP as guilty of such acts and asked the judiciary to live up to its responsibility. His words: "Judging from the poll results of local and international pollsters, the results that have so far been declared have not deviated materially from the average projections of these polls. My advice to all those who feel aggrieved by the outcome of the elections is that they should avail themselves of the laid down constitutional procedure for seeking redress in electoral matters. "INEC should aid the election tribunals in ensuring expeditious resolution of all cases that may come up by providing documents for plaintiffs and defendants alike," the president observed. The president said some of the lapses that were recorded during the elections would have been avoided if the political parties and politicians had acted in a proper manner. "It is evident that most of these lapses could have been avoided if certain individuals and groups had done what they should have done when they ought to have done them. "Political parties, and I mean all political parties, cannot absolve themselves of blame for some of the reported failings. Some political leaders are known to have openly fanned the embers of hate and violence, while some have engaged in outright subversive activity," Obasanjo said. The president urged the judiciary to resolve all disputes arising from the election before May 29, so that Nigerians could reconcile among themselves and the nation will beat its chest for achieving a successful transition. According to him, "in the next five weeks, I hope the Election and Appeal Tribunals will work earnestly to expeditiously adjudicate on all the disputes that will be brought before them. That way, mistakes and accidents can be corrected. "My hope is that by the time the Election Tribunals and Appellate Courts complete the review of the cases before them, Nigerians will reconcile with one another and the nation will move on," he said. Worst election ever— Buhari But, reacting to the declaration by INEC, the presidential candidate of the ANPP, General Buhari, described last Saturday’s polls as the worst ever in the history of the country. In a statement, General Buhari said: "The ‘election’ was neither free nor fair, nor credible. In a nutshell, there has been no election worth the name in Nigeria on Saturday.  The ‘election’ did not meet any national or international standards. I completely and whole-heartedly reject these results as a sham. It was a disgrace to Nigeria, a shame on INEC, a great dishonour to the PDP Government. "We advocated free and fair elections so that Nigerians would freely choose who to govern them.  This, the Nigerian people have been denied.  Democracy in Nigeria will survive only if the basic and elementary rules of democracy — free and fair elections for citizens to exercise their choice — are observed.  The last elections did not meet even the barest minimum conduct even in a failed state where there is no law or order.  Our political evolution is moving in the opposite direction — a dangerous drift from rule of one party to a faction of the party and to one person. This is a drift towards modern slavery. This is what we are resisting. This is what we are rejecting, because neither democracy nor Nigeria can survive and prosper under these conditions. "My colleagues in the ANPP and our allies are carefully collating as much documentary evidence of the illegalities and irregularities committed by INEC and will be presented to the Nigerian people as a matter of public record." Giving an insight into the level of irregularities that characterised the election, General Buhari said: "INEC have announced to the world the most blatantly rigged election results ever produced in Nigeria surpassing even the massive fraud of 2003.  Constituency reports from all over the country relate the same story:  Late arrival of officials at polling booths.  Late arrival of voting papers.  Severe shortage of ballot, ink or writing materials.  Presidential ballot papers arrived in loose form without serial numbers.  More than half of the states of Nigeria received half or less the number of Presidential ballot papers due to them according to their registered voters.  In short, more than half of the electorate have been disfranchised. "Examples are many nationwide Borno State with 6,943 square kilometres and 3,393 polling units received only one-third of the required Presidential ballot papers and at sunset even these did not reach their destinations state-wide.  When the voting closed two-thirds of the election materials were unused by bona fide voters. "For all practical purposes, there was no election in the whole of the Niger Delta, nor in Gombe State where electoral materials were kept in Government House and released piecemeal to some constituencies. Buhari rules  out court option Buhari, however, ruled out the court option, saying nobody wins election through the court. "We have decided that it is not worthy to go to court because there is no need to go to court really. In any case, nobody in the history of political power has ever taken power in a courtroom. Power is taken either through the ballot box, through a revolution, through a rebellion or through coup de’tat.  "We have tried the ballot box, we are committed to the ballot box, but we have failed in the ballot box in Nigeria. It is left to the people of Nigeria to establish their rights and their freedom to choose the government of theirs which ought to create conditions for their rights to be exercised so that they can choose the government of their wish." AC rejects results In the same vein, AC described the elections as the worst in history. Describing the governorship and presidential elections as daylight robbery, the party, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, called the Electoral Commission an agent of the PDP. The AC said: "We wish to state unequivocally that the results of the deeply flawed 2007 elections in the country will not stand, because they were based on a process that was clearly manipulated by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in collusion with INEC and the security agencies. "The votes tally that were announced for the various candidates, especially in the presidential elections, were allocated by the powers that be as it suits their fancy, and did not reflect the will of Nigerians who defied all the odds to attempt to exercise their franchise but were deliberately frustrated. "We are vindicated in our assessment of the elections by their widespread condemnation by local and international election monitors, especially the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), the US-based International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the EU Observer Mission, just to mention a few. "The summary of their observations is simple: that the elections fell far short of basic international and regional standards for democratic elections. "Specifically, the EU Observer Mission said the elections were ‘marred by poor organisations, lack of essential transparency, widespread irregularities, significant evidence of fraud particularly during the result collation process, voter disenfranchisement at different stages of the process, lack of equal conditions for contestants and numerous incidents of violence.’ "NDI virtually called the election the worst in the world, having essentially failed the Nigerian people! It is inconceivable that in free and fair elections, all the total votes of the opposition presidential candidates in the country could not match the vote of the candidate of the ruling party in this ‘selection’ process. "It is even more reprehensible that the man who precipitated the crisis in the country today, President Olusegun Obasanjo, has suddenly turned sanctimonious and blamed everyone but himself for the crisis into which Nigerian has been thrown by his do-or-die politics. "More unacceptable is his belated appeal to all those who were aggrieved by the lapses in what has turned out to be the worst elections in the history of Nigeria to go to court. His appeal pre-supposes that elections were held in the first instance, which was not the case. Fawehinmi, Okotie reject results Lagos lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), said the declaration of Alhaji Yar’dua as the winner of the April 21 presidential poll by the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Maurice Iwu was fundamentally defective, while the Reverend Chris Okotie, Presidential candidate of Fresh Democratic Party (FDP), described the election as a sham and totally unacceptable. Fawehinmi said the announcement by Prof. Iwu, the Chief Returning Officer of the presidential election did not satisfy the conditions for electing a president as stipulated in the 1999 constitution. His words: "The constitution states that for you to be elected president apart from having the highest number of votes as announced by lwu in the case of Yar’dua, the winner is also expected to score one quarter of the total votes cast in two third of the states of the federation and Abuja which Iwu failed to mention in the declaration as he only said he won only the highest number of votes cast." He added that INEC chairman’s declaration "does not have the blessing of the people as the result does not represent the wishes of an average Nigerian who voted during the polls". Fawehinmi said the presidential polls had been flawed and faulted "as many people did not vote because they were disenfranchised. "The whole exercise was fraught with fraud and massive rigging. It amounted to electoral robbery and is an open directly organized and supervised electoral robbery and a cacophony of disaster ever witnessed in history of election in Nigeria. On this basis, Yar’Adua lacks the moral authority to govern the Nigerian people." I feel humbled—Yar’Adua Basking in the euphoria of his landslide victory, Governor  Yar’Adua, yesterday, extended a hand of fellowship to those who lost in the election urging them to come together in the "interest of Nigeria and Nigerians." Speaking with State House correspondents shortly after he met with President Olusegun Obasanjo at the Presidential Villa, Alhaji Yar’Adua said he was humbled by the electoral victory and thanked all those who worked for his victory. Governor Yar’Adua who was accompanied to the Villa by the Governor-elect of Katsina State, Ibrahim Shema said: "I feel greatly humbled, with all sense of responsibility. I express gratitude to God and to all Nigerians, and all the political class." Speaking about those he defeated at the polls, Yar’Adua said: "I intend to invite them to join hands with me to work for this country. We are all Nigerians and we all have care for Nigeria. I extend a hand of friendship to them so that together, we can work together in the best interest of Nigeria and Nigerians." He said allegations of rigging of the just concluded presidential elections were not based on facts, saying he was not aware of protest by opposition parties against the result of the elections. He said individuals and groups had expressed their opinions concerning the elections, adding that such opinions were not an indication that the elections were rigged. According to him, while some have described the elections as fraught with fraud, others believe it is the best elections ever held in the country. On the Niger Delta Delta question, Yar’ Adua said his government would reach out to all stakeholders in the region to find a lasting solution to the problem. He said the problems in the region would be approached holistically to ensure that developments get to the region. "I have explained in the seven-point agenda that the Niger Delta problem will be approached holistically. We will address the issue of agitations of Niger Delta communities by evolving a sustainable development programme," Yar’Adua said.        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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