By Johnson Eyiangho, Abuja

 In the aftermath of the Supreme Court Judgment, which upheld the election of President Bola Tinubu, former Vice-president and Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the February 25, 2023 Presidential Election, Atiku Abubakar, has said he won’t quit politics but continue to struggle with other Nigerians, to deepen democracy and rule of law in the country.

 “I am not going away. For as long as I breathe I will continue to struggle, with other Nigerians, to deepen our democracy and rule of law and for the kind of political and economic restructuring the country needs to reach its true potential,” Atiku said. Atiku, who spoke at a news conference on Monday, suggested that the struggle to deepen democracy “should now be led by the younger generation of Nigerians who have even more at stake than his generation.To deepen democracy in the country, Atiku called for urgent constitutional amendments to prevent any court or tribunal from hiding behind technicalities and legal sophistry to undermine the will of the people. “We must make electronic voting and collation of results mandatory.  “Secondly, we must provide that all litigation arising from a disputed election must be concluded before the inauguration of a winner.”Thirdly, in order to ensure popular mandate and real representation, we must move to require a candidate for President to earn 50% +1 of the valid votes cast, failing which a run-off between the top two candidates will be held.”Fourthly, in order to reduce the desperation of incumbents and distractions from governing and also to promote equity and national unity, we need to move to a single six-year term for the President to be rotated among the six geo-political zones,” he said.The former Vice-president added that rotating the presidency among the six geo-political zones would prevent the ganging up of two or more geo-political zones to alternate the presidency among themselves to the exclusion of other zones. According to him, INEC should be mandated to verify the credentials submitted to it by candidates and their parties and where it is unable to do so – perhaps because the institutions involved did not respond in time – it must publicly state so and have it on record. “A situation where a candidate submits contradictory credentials to INEC in different election cycles and the electoral umpire accepts them without question points to gross negligence, at best, or collusion to break the law by the leadership of the INEC, at worst.”The submission of contradictory qualifying documents by a candidate as well as those found to be forged or falsified should disqualify a candidate even if the falsification or forgery is discovered after the person had been sworn into office.”The burden of proving that a document submitted to INEC is forged should not be on the opposing candidates in the election. It is never the responsibility of an applicant for a job to prove that the person who eventually got the job did so with forged documents,” he said. He added in addition to those proposed constitutional amendments, the Electoral Act should be amended to provide that, except where they explicitly violate the Constitution and other laws, the rules and procedures laid down by the electoral umpire and made public for the benefit of the contestants and the voters should be “treated as sacrosanct by the courts in deciding on election disputes”. Atiku said referees such as INEC should not be allowed to set the rules for the game only to change or ignore them when one side has scored a goal or is about to win the match. “We must restore confidence in our electoral system which the current leadership of INEC has completely eroded and undermined,” he added. On the last presidential election and judgment of the Supreme Court, Atiku said he did not suffer the bigger loss but “Nigeria’s if the Supreme Court legitimizes illegality, including forgery, identity theft, and perjury”. He said, “If the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, implies by its judgment that crime is good and should be rewarded, then Nigeria has lost and the country is doomed irrespective of who occupies the Presidential seat. If the Supreme Court decides that the Electoral umpire, INEC, can tell the public one thing and then do something else in order to reach a corruptly predetermined outcome, then there is really no hope for the country’s democracy and electoral politics. “Obviously, the consequences of those decisions for the country will not end at the expiration of the current government. They will last for decades. I am absolutely sure that history will vindicate me. We now know what the Supreme Court has decided.” On the implications of judgments delivered by the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) and Supreme Court, Atiku said, “I leave Nigerians and the world to decide what to make of the Supreme Court’s unfortunate decision. But here’s my take. The judgments of the PEPC and the Supreme Court have very far-reaching grave implications, including the following: “One is the erosion of trust in the electoral system and our democracy. Nigerians witnessed as the National Assembly changed the electoral law to improve transparency in the process. “Of particular importance was the introduction of modern technology to help eliminate the recurring incidents of electoral manipulation, particularly during the collation of results. “Nigerians and the world also witnessed as the leadership of the INEC, especially its Chairman and National Commissioner for Voter Education reassured Nigerians on national television multiple times that the use of that technology would be mandatory. He added, “Yet that same INEC undermined the use of that technology during the elections and collation process and declared as winner someone who clearly did not win the Presidential election. They then went further to take sides in the courts in a dogfight to defend their illegality. “Who would convince the millions of Nigerians to vote in future elections after they suffered endlessly on queues to register to vote, to collect PVCs and to vote, based on INEC’s assurances only to see their votes stolen and given to someone they did not vote for? “When people lose trust and confidence in elections, democracy is practically on life support. And by affirming and legitimizing the continued lack of transparency in our electoral system the courts are continuing to usurp the rights of voters to elect their leaders.”The other grave implication is that contestants in Nigeria’s elections should do whatever is necessary to be declared the winner. That includes identity theft, impersonation, forging of educational and other documents, perjury, and violence. “And, as they do so, they should ignore whatever the law says and whatever assurances from the leadership of the electoral umpire about what the law says and what they would do in compliance. “And they would do so knowing that our courts would approve of their behaviour or at best pretend not to take any notice of it. The third is that if you are robbed of victory, do not bother going to court for redress because your glaring evidence of the robbery will be ignored in favour of the mandate bandit.” In a counter response, the presidency told Atiku that Nigeria is not doomed, adding, “It is only Atiku’s inordinate ambition to be President that is doomed.” According to the Presidency, Nigeria is moving forward and set to achieve its manifest destiny as one of the most respected and successful nations of the world under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga in a statement on Monday, said, “contrary to Atiku’s gloomy submission on our democracy, we are excited to tell the world that our democracy is thriving and blossoming.“It is the reason, for the first time, since 1999 the character of our National Assembly and its outlook reflect the diversity and plurality of the choices and preferences of voters as a rainbow coalition of different parties as opposed to the practice in the past where just two parties dominated the national parliament. “In today’s Nigeria, votes count. No amount of deliberate distortions of facts about our recent election by Alhaji Atiku and his partner, Peter Obi can vitiate the continuous improvement of our electoral process which local and international observers have hailed. As declared by the Supreme Court, IReV was not designed as an online collation centre. It was simply a public viewing centre for results. “PDP and Atiku, including Peter Obi’s faction of the Labour Party cannot continue to insist on their own reality against commonsense, logic and the law. “Atiku and his army of hirelings knew why they lost the election. The PDP candidate lost because Nigerians preferred Bola Ahmed Tinubu and voted for him to be president. Tinubu, along with his APC, won because he offered a better vision for our country’s future. The All Progressives Congress was a united and formidable party which ran a well-coordinated campaign with his rank and file intact,” Onanuga stated.