Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, on Thursday, said he would challenge the election that produced Bola Tinubu as president-elect.

Mr Obi made the comments during an international press conference he held at Transcorp Hilton on Thursday.

“If you must answer his excellency, the process by which you arrived at the office must be excellent,” Mr Obi said.

He promised Nigerians during a press conference at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, that he will do everything to prove to Nigerians that “we won the election.”

When asked about the evidence to support his claim of a stolen mandate, Mr Obi argued that the number of voters who participated in the exercise dropped compared to those who participated in 2019. This decline does not reflect 2023’s more than eleven million newly registered voters because of the manipulation by contenders from the ruling party in connivance with INEC officials.

“In 2015 the number of registered voters… are about 67 million registered voters and 29.4[million] voted. In 2019 that tally increased to about 80/84 million and about 24 million voted, and we were told that about 11 million registered in 2022 which brought the registration to about 95[million] but 87 [million] collected their PVC… but only 23.3 million voted.

“The voters dropped by over twenty percent instead of increasing, the reason due to manipulation and reduction and removal and increase of votes here and there because otherwise the number is supposed to have increased…,” Mr Obi said. “And we have chosen that we’ll challenge this rascality for the future of this country.”

Mr Obi’s announcement comes after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) refused repeated calls by his party, Labour Party, and other opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the African Democratic Congress (ADC) to suspend the collation of the results and cancel the election due to reported widespread irregularities.

The Labour Party becomes the first opposition party to announce its intention to pursue legal means to question the processes employed by INEC in the conduct of the election and the subsequent announcement of Mr Tinubu as the winner.