Atiku Abubakar has praised Umaru Fintiri’s re-election as Governor of Adamawa State, calling it a victory for democracy.
Aisha ‘Binani’ Dahiru of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was earlier declared the winner by an official of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) even before the collation of results for the supplementary exercise ended, a move that the Commission nullified.
But following the conclusion of the rescheduled collation, Fintiri, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, was declared the winner of the highly-dramatic poll Tuesday, beating his closest rival ‘Binani’.
Minutes after the declaration, Atiku who was the PDP presidential candidate for the 2023 elections, said the triumph proves that good can overcome bad.
“Congratulations, Gov Ahmadu Fintiri, on your deserved reelection as governor of Adamawa State. Thank you to the people of Adamawa and men and women of goodwill for staying the course in resisting coupists and enemies of democracy from having their way,” the Adamawa-born former vice president tweeted.
“The lesson from this exercise and others is the need for Nigerians to be vigilant and never give in to anti-democratic forces whose objective is to snatch, run with and undermine the mandate of the people as freely expressed in their votes.”
Following Fintiri’s victory, Atiku is optimistic about winning at the presidential election tribunal where he is challenging Bola Tinubu’s emergence as Nigeria’s leader.
“By the way, it is not yet uhuru as we still have one more major mandate to reclaim, and together as ONE, we shall accomplish the task for the good of our country and its people,” he added.