Alex Obiechina, a Labour Party (LP) chieftain, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to move the handover ceremony and inauguration of President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu to June 12.
He stated that the change will give the judiciary enough time to decide competing concerns regarding the actual winner of the February 25 presidential election.
He recalled how Nigerians celebrated the declaration of June 12 as the real Democracy Day by the Buhari administration, stressing that the 2023 presidential election achieved similar national enthusiasm as witnessed on June 12, 1993.
He, therefore, pleaded with President Buhari to honour his commitment not to interfere with the presidential election by allowing the presidential election petition tribunal to make the final declaration on the outcome of the election before a winner is sworn into office.
The former governorship aspirant in Enugu State said as a stakeholder in electoral process, he knows the pain of truncating the will of the masses.
While praying that the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election should not be allowed to repeat itself by swearing in a disputed winner, he noted that abundance of evidence have been pleaded at the presidential election tribunal starting today.
In a statement, yesterday, the LP chieftain and frontline estate mogul, argued that swearing in Tinubu even when the courts have not examined the processes leading to the announcement of a winner, would amount to investing helplessness on the court, thereby rendering the petitioners’ actions as mere academic exercise.
“But, over and above the disputes over the declaration of Tinubu as winner of the presidential election of February 25, strong constitutional arguments have been pushed to put a serious doubt to INEC’s hasty handing over of a certificate of return to Tinubu.
“The major constitutional hurdle is Section 134, which stipulates that a winner must attain 25 per cent of the total valid votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in a presidential poll. This is the Gordian knot that the nation’s judiciary has been urged to untie.”
Obiechina, therefore, urged President Buhari to avoid handing over or inaugurating a new administration on May 29, to disabuse the minds of Nigerians that the presidency was behind the plot to subvert the expressed will of Nigerian electorate.
He enjoined the president to respect the wishes of Nigerians by avoiding the unconstitutional act of swearing in the beneficiary of a flawed and disputed declaration.