The pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere has warned against any step that can jeopardise the handing over of the rein of power to elected officers on 29th May 2023.
The warning, which was contained in a press statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Comrade Jare Ajayi, was prompted by reports of steps being taken to pre-judicially affect to the swearing-in of winners of the just concluded elections.
Such steps included the attempts to rubbish the outcome of the elections, especially the 25th February presidential election, the resuscitation of the calls for the formation of an Interim Government, and protests or rallies being conducted especially in Abuja and the United States of America against the result of the election.
Afenifere spokesman said that the organisation felt so concerned about the untoward development because of how it is gaining currency in the country and outside the shores of the land.
Last week, the Directorate of State Services (DSS) said that moves were indeed on to scuttle the planned inauguration. The DSS said: “The planners, in their many meetings, have weighed various options, which include, among others, to sponsor endless violent mass protests in major cities to warrant a declaration of a State of Emergency. Another is to obtain frivolous court injunctions to forestall the inauguration of new executive administrations and legislative houses at the Federal and State levels”.
The country’s secret police described those behind the move as people with “entrenched interests’” who are working on foisting an illegality that is “totally unacceptable in a democracy and to the peace loving Nigerians”.
Ajayi reminded those fanning embers of non-inauguration to be aware that the monster being courted would affect not only the Presidency to be headed by the winner of the election, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. “The disruption will affect all other tiers of government as well, governors at the state level, the legislatures at the national and state levels and perhaps the local government areas.
“There is therefore the need to exercise a lot of caution. The laws of the land created avenues to seek redress when we are aggrieved. We enjoin those who may not be satisfied with the outcome of the concluded elections to seek redress through the established channels and NOT through any other means. It is also important to let members of the public realise that anything short of following due process, particularly in the swearing-in of winners of the just concluded elections, constitutes grave dangers for the country. This must not be accepted or encouraged at all because of its dire consequences”.
He also called on the judiciary not to entertain cases that might be brought to derail the hard-earned civil rule and thus scuttle our democracy.
Earlier last year, legal luminary, Chief Afe Babalola mooted the idea of an Interim Government following the extent to which insecurity has gone in the country and the depth of uncertainty that was prevalent in the land.
Afenifere however asserted that “the successful conclusion of a general election this year has provided the country another opportunity to re-invent itself. We believe that the government that will be formed at the expiration of President Mohammadu Buhari administration on May 29 this year will open new (positive) vistas for the country. The new government, a product of the process created by the Nigerian Constitution i.e. electoral process, elicits hope of a new lease because of the acrimonious air and near despondence in the the land”.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Tinubu of All Progressives Congress (APC) the winner of the presidential election. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Mr Peter Obi of Labour Party, first and second runners-up in the presidential election, are challenging Tinubu’s victory in the court.
But for 2015 when the then President Goodluck Jonathan decided not to contest his defeat in the court, virtually all the presidential elections since the present civil dispensation in 1999 had been contested in the courts. At no time did the filing of such cases stop inauguration. In the case of some governors whose elections were later overturned by the courts, they were initially sworn-in and were governing. They vacated their offices only after the court process had been exhausted. The situation can not be different this time around.
Ajayi also felt that those insinuating that the allegation of an Interim Government plan might be a ruse should remember that most things of this nature always begin as rumours in Nigeria. “Since we know that it is fraught with danger, it is very necessary we make it known that it would be unacceptable”, he recalled.
He then called on the DSS and the Police to swing into action by apprehending those they suspected as being behind the nefarious plot rather than just confirming the knowledge of it.
“It is by so doing and by taking the culprits to court that members of the public would believe that the security agency is not just crying wolf or selling a dummy”, Ajayi said.
