Victor EzejaSpokesperson of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC-PCC), Festus Keyamo, who is also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), has petition the Department of State Services (DSS), asking it to arrest presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, and his running mate, Dr Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, over alleged incitement and treasonable felony.
Keyamo presented his two-page petition document dated 23rd March to the DSS on Thursday.
A copy of the petition was sighted by our correspondent on Keyamo’s official Twitter handle on Thursday evening.
In the petition, Keyamo, who is currently serving in President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet as Minister of State for Labour, accused Obi and Datti of causing insurection or rebellion against the government of Nigeria through their ulterances on matters arising from the just concluded general elections, particularly that of the presidential polls in which the APC candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was declared the winner and president-elect by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Keyamo noted that in a post-election period such as this, there is a need to soothe frayed nerves, lower the political temperature and begin the healing process, and that Tinubu had issued a statement calling for peace.
“However, it appears the President and Vice-Presidential Candidates of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed are not prepared to toe this conciliatory path for the sake of peace and national cohesion, whilst exercising their rights to pursue duly laid down constitutional means of addressing their grievances,” he stated.
Keyamo claimed that since the declaration of presidential election results by INEC, Obi and Datti have been using media platforms to make incendiary comments and claims about the declaration of the President-elect by INEC.
He further argued that the comments and claims are “made, not just within the boundaries of exercising their rights to freedom of speech and the freedom to air their grievances publicly, but they have since crossed the line to call for the outright truncation of democracy by insisting on the adoption of other processes outside the contemplation of our Constitution.
“In some cases, their privies have even called for the establishment of an Interim Government.
“The latest of such are the comments made by Datti Baba-Ahmed on behalf of himself and Mr Peter Obi on Channels TV on Wednesday, March 22, 2023, wherein he threatened that if the President-Elect is sworn in on May 29, 2023.
“Posing as an accuser, a judge and a jury all by himself, he unilaterally declared the duly elected President-elect as ‘unconstitutional’ and, in a subliminal manner, threatened mayhem if the President-elect is sworn in on May 29, 2023.”
Keyamo further made an allegation in the petition that Obi and Datti have “camped some youths in a popular hotel in Abuja with the sole aim of instructing them to push out inciting messages everyday on social media in order to cause panic and fear within the federation and to incite people to riot and social unrest.
“It is noteworthy that Peter Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed have submitted Elections Petitions to the courts for adjudication, but their conducts and utterances amount to subversion of the processes they have instuted in court and a subversion of our Constitution and the laid-down processesfor addressing disputes and grievances. These conducts and utterances are a build-up to something more sinister and it is important you rein them in now!
“In the circumstance, I submit this petition in my personal capacity as a patriotic Nigerian to invite/arrest, interrogate and after investigation, if necessary, charge both individuals to court for their conducts which amount to incitement and treasonable felony,” Keyamo concluded.
The LP vice presidential candidate, Datti, had appeared on Channels Television’s Politics Today, on Wednesday, 22nd March, where he stated that the manner in which results of the 25th February presidential election was collated and subsequent declaration of the winner and president-elect by INEC was unconstitutional.
He stressed that going ahead to swear-in Tinubu and the Vice President-elect, Kashim Shettima, will amount to constitutional crisis.
He cited section 134 of the 1999 Constitution as amended which stipulated the requirements for a presidential candidate to emerge as a winner in an election, and argued that Tinubu did not meet the criteria.
Datti further stated that INEC did not follow the provisions of the Electoral Act and its own guidelines in the collation of results, adding that other irregularities were witnessed during the polls.
He pointed out that even when the Labour Party and other opposition parties raised the alarm, urging INEC to suspend collation and review the process, the electoral body went ahead and concluded with a declaration of the winner and president-elect in the early hours of Wednesday, March 1, 2023.
“Nigeria is facing a constitutional crisis and it is not realising it yet. A Certificate of Return her issued to the so -callef President-elect unconstitutionally,” Datti stated.
“The Certificate of Return issued to Tinubu is a dud certificate. It is one certificate that breaches the provisions of section 134. Therefore, the requirements to be declared as President-elect have not been met by the Tinubu-Shettima ticket. The declaration therefore, as it stands now, as far as the people of Nigeria who choose to adopt the literal clear interpreted meaning of section 134 is concerned, there is really no President-elect in Nigeria.
“Section 134 stipulates who to be declared and issued Certificate of Return. It is only that candidate that has scored the highest number of votes and at least 25 per cent of each of at least two-third of the states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
Tinubu do not have 25 per cent in the FCT, we denied him, we got 61 per cent,” Datti argued.
According to him, Tinubu has not satisfied the constitutional requirements to be declared President-elect.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with six years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Masters degree in Mass Communication.
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