Dele Alake: It’s unfair to say presidential election was fraudulent | It’s most credible since 1999

Dele Alake, a media aide to Bola Tinubu, president-elect, says it’s unfair for a section of the international media to describe the country’s presidential election as fraudulent.

Speaking at a meeting with representatives of international media organisations in Abuja on Thursday, Alake alleged that some of the outlets took sides with candidates on the basis of “flawed polls”.

The president-elect’s aide said these events have led to a “mischaracterisation” of Tinubu that they object to.

“With the eventual outcome of the election at variance with some of the Labour Party-sponsored pre-election predictions, many international media organisations that took premature positions on the basis of these flawed polls, found themselves blind-spotted, leading to some of the skewed reports about the election,” Alake said.

“We object to the mischaracterisation of the presidential election by a section of the international media.

“Contrary to the innuendos and aspersions being cast on the election by organisations such as Financial Times, Economist, New York Times among others, we make bold to say that the 2023 Presidential election is the most credible, most free and most fair national election in Nigeria since 1999.

“We consider it unfair and quite uncharitable to describe the last election as fraudulent, manipulated or flawed.

“All the noise over results not being uploaded on the INEC server was misplaced. The election in Nigeria is done at about 176,000 polling units. The results are announced, signed by party agents and sent to collation centres at ward, council and state levels.

“Results are tallied at the state level and announced.”

Alake said Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), failed at the polls because of the way they split votes among themselves.

“It must be stressed that only the APC went into the 2023 election intact,” he said.

“These divisions within the main opposition played out in our favour. It was a repeat of 2015 when some PDP states supported the new coalition of parties called APC and gave President Buhari a resounding victory.

“The presidential candidate of PDP at his post-election press conference admitted that the Labour Party swept away his party’s votes from its traditional stronghold in south-east and south-south.

“He is yet to admit the impact of the rebellion of the G5 governors and Kwankwaso in the large voting state of Kano.”