Dele Momodu, the director of strategic communication of the Atiku/Okowa presidential campaign council, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to call Bola Tinubu, APC presidential candidate in the Saturday 25th February election, to order over a publication he said was capable of setting the country on fire.
Mr Momodu said a newspaper, The Nation, believed to be owned Mr Tinubu, made a “recklessly dangerous publication unilaterally awarding an impossible victory” to the APC candidate.
Although results of Saturday’s elections have started coming in, in trickles, the National Collation Centre, according to the electoral commission, INEC, will officially be opened by noon on Sunday.
The four leading candidates in the presidential election -Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso – all recorded victories in their various polling units on Saturday.
Mr Momodu, who is the publisher of the celebrity magazine, Ovation, however, said in a statement he released on Sunday that “Mr Tinubu remains the only mainstream candidate whose home base of the South-west was decimated by opposition parties in Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Osun and Ekiti.”
He also accused Mr Tinubu and local chieftains of the APC in Lagos State of using thugs to burn ballot boxes and disenfranchise voters who were supposedly going to vote for the opposition parties in the state.
“The only candidate with the national spread is the PDP presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. But as a responsible citizen and respected statesman, he will never rush to the media to claim his well-deserved victory and glory after a long and torturous journey,” Mr Momodu said.
He called on President Buhari to find the courage to “call the bluff of these desperate politicians who feel they can buy the whole of Nigeria.”
Voting continues on Sunday in some parts of the country where polling could not take place on Saturday according to INEC.
Read the full statement below:
PLEASE CALL TINUBU TO ORDER, Dele Momodu tells President Buhari
Our attention has just been drawn to the recklessly dangerous publication unilaterally awarding an impossible victory to the APC Presidential candidate Chief Bola Tinubu. The said newspaper is owned by Tinubu.
Only yesterday, we all saw how thugs of the APC Chieftains and his allies took over the streets of Lagos burning ballot boxes and documents and generally misbehaving in other to disenfranchise the determined electorates. Despite all of these ugly attempts at stealing victory, the APC suffered its worst cataclysmic loss in most of the polling centres in Lagos. The same happened in Kano. Incapable of ever being sobered by the crushing humiliation in its traditional territories, we woke up this morning to read about the pathetic and illegal lies cooked up by the Tinubu media goons.
Tinubu remains the only mainstream candidate whose home base of South West was decimated by opposition parties in Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Osun and Ekiti.
Most of the Northern Governors he also expected to help him garner votes in the Northern regions failed spectacularly to deliver the badly needed votes. He failed in the South East and South-South.
The only candidate with the national spread is the PDP Presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. But as a responsible citizen and respected statesman, he will never rush to the media to claim his well-deserved victory and glory after a long and torturous journey.
We hereby call on INEC and the Federal Government to cage these troublesome APC Chieftains. We have all been witnesses to their unruly behaviour as they did everything to bully and blackmail President Muhammadu Buhari in order to chicken out of the currency swap policy.
We also witnessed how they practically intimidated the President to the extent of forcing him to publicly display who he voted for in yesterday’s elections. It was quite a bizarre, unfortunate and unprecedented scene to watch.
We advise the President to find the courage to call the bluff of these desperate politicians who feel they can buy the whole of Nigeria…
Signed:
CHIEF DELE MOMODU
Director of Strategic Communications
ATIKU/OKOWA Presidential Campaign Council
