Omoyele Sowore, candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in the last Saturday’s presidential election, has rejected the outcome of the exercise. 

Mr Sowore said that the results of the presidential election announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) “does not reflect the will of the people.”

“We categorically condemn the election that was held on the 25th of February as a fraudulent election that didn’t meet the standard of what should be called a free, fair, and credible election,” he said in a statement on Thursday. “Any figures, either for me or against me or them or against them that you see during this election were concocted and manufactured fraudulently,” he added. 

Mr Sowore had polled a total of 14,608 votes in the election. 

INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, had, on Wednesday, declared Mr Tinubu the winner of the February 25, 2023, presidential election at the National Collation Centre, Abuja, and subsequently issued him a Certificate of Return the same day.

Mr Yakubu said that Mr Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat his main challenger, Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), thereby winning 12 of 36 states of Nigeria.

He added that Mr Abubakar polled 6,984,520 votes to come second, while Peter Obi of the Labour Party came third, polling 6,101,533 votes.

Speaking further in the statement obtained by Peoples Gazette, Mr Sowore lamented the failure of the electoral body to transmit the presidential election results to its portal electronically as earlier assured Nigerians. 

He added that the exercise did not also meet any legal requirements, stressing that the election should never be described as credible nor transparent. 

“This particular election, by their own standard, did not meet any of the legal requirements that say every election result must be scanned and uploaded to the INEC server. But there is nothing new about it, before this election, I had said INEC wasn’t ready for this election.

“There is nothing surprising about it. We knew that these criminals in our system have no interest in organising a free and fair election. What they did was a selection as they usually do; they have just given you the candidate of the choice of the criminal political elite in Nigeria,” the AAC presidential candidate noted. 

The declaration of the election results has continued to generate concerns, especially with the failure of INEC to upload the figures on its portal electronically. 

Also, both the PDP and the LP have called for the outright cancellation of the presidential election with promises to seek legal redress in court. 

On Thursday, Mr Obi broke his silence over the outcome of the Saturday election, arguing that the presidential poll was marred with irregularities. 

The LP candidate, who addressed journalists in Abuja, claimed he won the presidential poll and would provide the “evidence” for Nigerians to see. 

He, however, vowed to explore the legal option to recover what he termed “his stolen mandate” from the court of law. 

“I assure the good people of Nigeria that we will explore all legal and peaceful options to recall our mandate. We won the election, and we will prove it to Nigerians,” Mr Obi said.