Nigeria is the biggest loser following the Supreme Court judgement affirming Bola Tinubu as President, Atiku Abubakar has declared.
Atiku, who was the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 presidential election and former Vice President said this while addressing journalists during a world press conference in Abuja, the nation’s capital, on Monday.
Atiku and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, Peter Obi, had challenged the victory of Tinubu in the last election by filing petitions at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
But their petitions were dismissed by the tribunal for being “unmeritorious”.
They subsequently appealed the ruling at the Supreme Court but the apex court also dismissed their appeals for lacking in merit.
At the press conference, Atiku who was reacting to the apex court judgment for the first time, said, “Someone asked me what I would do if I lost my election petition appeal at the Supreme Court. In response, I said that as long as Nigeria wins, the struggle would have been worth the while. By that, I meant that the bigger loss would not be mine but Nigeria’s if the Supreme Court legitimizes illegality, including forgery, identity theft, and perjury.
“If the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, implies by its judgment that crime is good and should be rewarded, then Nigeria has lost and the country is doomed irrespective of who occupies the Presidential seat. If the Supreme Court decides that the Electoral umpire, INEC, can tell the public one thing and then do something else in order to reach a corruptly predetermined outcome, then there is really no hope for the country’s democracy and electoral politics.
“Obviously, the consequences of those decisions for the country will not end at the expiration of the current government. They will last for decades. I am absolutely sure that history will vindicate me. We now know what the Supreme Court has decided.”
