The Kaduna based Islamic cleric Sheikh Ahmad Gumi says Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has shown distrust and suspicion among Nigerians by failing to follow its guidelines for February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections.
He said: “The INEC has failed the nation by sowing more distrust and suspicion because it failed to follow its own guidelines in conducting last week’s elections.”
The cleric, in a post on his Facebook page on Thursday morning, urged candidates in the just concluded presidential election to seek redress in court and not resort to violence.
“I, therefore, implore the opposition parties as an obligatory national duty to go to the election tribunal and up to the Supreme Court to reestablish the supremacy of law and to teach our younger generation the value of resolving disputes through legal means rather than violence,” Mr Gumi stressed.
The Informant247 earlier reported that in the early hours of Wednesday, the INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu declared Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress winner of February 25 presidential election at the National Collation Centre in Abuja.
The declaration of Tinubu as the president-elect came amidst huge protests by PDP and Labour Party, calling for the suspension of result collation and outright cancellation of the presidential poll due to INEC’s failure to upload election results on its server in real-time.
Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, winning 12 of 36 states of Nigeria. Mr Abubakar had 6,984,520 votes, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party polled 6,101,533 votes.