Mr Atedo Peterside, the founder of Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc, has expressed disappointment at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), over the performance of the February 25th presidential and house of assembly elections.
Registering his disapproval with the emergence of Ahmed Bola Tinubu as the president-elect, he noted that the result uploaded by the commission is an insult to anyone’s intelligence.
Peterside made this known in an interview on Arise TV, on Tuesday. He commended the steps taken by the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar of Peoples Democratic Party, respectively, to challenge the outcome of the election in court.
He said,
“If they go through this process and the judges convince us that everything was done correctly and we adopt the numbers, whoever is the winner, we will congratulate the person,” he said. “But for now it is premature; when I can see with my own eyes what INEC has uploaded, it is an insult to everybody’s intelligence; it is premature; people who are rushing to congratulate him have not taken the trouble to even look at the available information or the evidence. INEC is each to its own.”
Speaking on the forthcoming gubernatorial and state houses of assembly elections, coming up on Saturday, March 18, Peterside stated that INEC can’t afford to repeat the same mistake that questioned its credibility, competence, and impartiality in the presidential election.
He said,
“It is a chance for the INEC chairman and others to redeem themselves; he should insist that everybody upload the results after voting. We cannot have one or two states hold back the result after voting and start thump printing endlessly and claiming that they could not transmit the result. INEC cannot fail twice. They cannot repeat that same mistake.”
