Senator Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, the running mate to Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25 election, has stated that Bola Tinubu is not the president-elect of Nigeria.
Baba-Ahmed said that the certificate of return presented to Tinubu by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is “dud.”
On Tuesday, the contents of Obi’s petition filed against Tinubu at the Election Tribunal sitting Abuja, surfaced online. The former Anambra governor cited Tinubu’s alleged forfeiture of the sum of $460,000 in a drug-related case in the United States several years ago as one of the grounds for his disqualification and annulment of February’s election.
Tinubu had reportedly forfeited the sum in order to avoid imprisonment. Baba-Ahmed described Tinubu’s rise to power as a violation of the Nigerian Constitution, given his previous criminal record. It remains to be seen how this will affect Tinubu’s political career and the future of the Nigerian presidency.
Senator Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed also revealed that the Labour Party employed tactics that were different from what the All Progressives Congress (APC) was expecting “to teach them a lesson.”
He claimed that they did not ask the APC to rig the elections and that they had been very gentle with them. Baba-Ahmed added that they could account for all their political opponents, unlike the other elected persons who could not account for all their opponents in Lagos and Borno.
He warned that this was a dangerous situation, and referred to Tinubu’s alleged forfeiture of $460,000 in order not to go to prison, stating that he was now a president-elect after assaulting the Nigerian Constitution.
Baba-Ahmed concluded by saying that they would hit the APC where they never expected, as they never thought that they would behave in the way they did.