Accept whatever court decides - Buhari tells opposition parties

The outgoing President, Muhammadu Buhari, has appealed to opposition parties to accept whatever judgement comes out of the courts regarding the 2023 general elections.

Buhari made the appeal during his farewell broadcast to Nigerians aired on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) on the morning of Sunday, May 28, 2023.

While acknowledging the democratic right of aggrieved parties and candidates to seek redress for perceived injustices, Buhari urged them to abide by the court decision and join hands with the winner to build a better Nigeria for all.

"Irrespective of the outcome of the various cases, I urge all parties involved to accept the decision of our courts and join hands to build a better Nigeria.

"I salute the doggedness and resilience of all the Presidential Candidates and their political parties for believing in our judicial system by taking their grievances with the election results to court.

"In the course of the campaigns, we had argued and disagreed on how to make Nigeria better but we never disagreed or had any doubts that Nigeria has to be better.

"As your President, I call on all of us to bring to bear the strength of our individualism, the power of our unity, the convictions of our beliefs to make Nigeria work better and together with one spirit and one purpose."

You can read Buhari's full speech here.

It'd be recalled that the President had made a similar appeal in his Easter Day message on April 7, when he urged Nigerians aggrieved by the outcome of the February 25 and March 18 elections to “wait patiently and allow our legal system to run its course.”

This comes following the controversies that trailed the general elections, particularly the presidential poll whose outcome has been rejected by the two main opposition parties and their candidates.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on March 1, 2023, declared Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the election having polled 8,794,726 votes to beat Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Labour Party and the PDP.

The commission announced Atiku as the first runner-up in the poll with 6,984,520 votes, while Obi finished third with 6,101,533 votes.

However, both Atiku and Obi have vehemently rejected the results announced by INEC over claims that the exercise was fraught with manipulation and irregularities

The duo and other political parties have approached the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to ask for, among other things, outright cancellation of Tinubu's victory and his disqualification from the process altogether.

Pulse reports that after two weeks of pre-hearing proceedings which commenced on May 8, the tribunal has fixed May 30 for the commencement of hearings proper.