Buhari urges opposition parties to accept court judgement
President Muhammadu Buhari has urged opposition parties to accept the verdict of the court even as the election tribunal hearing begins on Tuesday, May 30.
“Irrespective of the outcome of the various cases, I urge all parties involved to accept the decision of our courts and join hands to build a better Nigeria,” Buhari said in his farewell message aired on the Nigerian Television Authority, early Sunday.
Buhari saluted the “doggedness and resilience” of all the presidential candidates and their political parties for believing in our judicial system by taking their grievances with the election results to the court.
He said “In the course of the campaigns, we had argued and disagreed on how to make Nigeria better but we never disagreed or had any doubts that Nigeria has to be better.
“As your President, I call on all of us to bear the strength of our individualism, the power of our unity, the convictions of our beliefs to make Nigeria work better and together with one spirit and one purpose.”
Buhari advocated a similar idea in his Easter Day message on April 7, when he urged Nigerians aggrieved by the outcome of the February 25 and March 18 elections to “wait patiently and allow our legal system to run its course.”
On March 1, 2023, the Independent National Electoral Commission declared Bola Tinubu of the governing All Progressives Congress as the winner of the Presidential polls held a week earlier, having polled 8,794,726 votes.
The commission declared that Atiku came second with 6,984,520 votes, while it announced Labour Party’s Peter Obi as the second runner-up with 6,101,533 votes.
But Atiku, Obi and some other parties rejected the results announced by INEC and had approached the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to annul Tinubu’s victory.
The tribunal began pre-hearing on Monday, May 8 and, only last Tuesday, slated the hearings proper for May 30.
