Abuja, April 1 – With the final result yet to be announced, the Nigerian opposition party on Tuesday declared victory in the recent presidential poll. Nigeria’s former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari said he is very confident of victory as vote counting after a tense general election showed him pulling ahead of President Goodluck Jonathan.
Shehu Garba, spokesperson of the opposition party’s campaign organisation, said the political group has already declared a victory party in Abuja, with the party’s presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, in attendance.
“We have already won the election. The figures have shown we won and the ruling party cannot meet up with the figures. It is not possible,” Xinhua quoted Garba as saying. The opposition All Progressives Congress party took a lead in weekend’s presidential election, according to results of 33 states released by the Independent National Electoral Commission. Results of Sokoto, Delta and Borno states are yet to be released.
Earlier, Nigeria’s ruling party staged a protest at the national collation centre for the presidential election, accusing the electoral body of being partial and calling for “a total cancellation of the count”.
Led by its agent at the election collation center, Godsday Orubebe, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members staged a half-hour protest and delayed the collation process, Xinhua news agency reported.
Orubebe said the electoral body has ignored the PDP’s petitions on alleged voting irregularities in seven northern states, but has accepted a petition from the opposition All Progressives Congress about alleged vote rigging in the southern Rivers state and launched a probe into it.
Orubebe, who mounted the platform and halted the process, said “he would not allow the collation to continue until his party was given a fair hearing”. Nigerian electoral chief, Attahiru Jega, urged the ruling party to leave the national collation centre, as “it is the electoral body’s secretariat that such complaints could be directed to”.
-INDIA TODAY
