Tinubu Visits Atiku After INEC Issued Him Certificate Of Return As President-Elect

After a hard-fought election, Nigeria’s President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has made a surprising decision to visit his closest rival and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, THE WHISTLER reports.

The expected visit on Wednesday night will offer Tinubu an opportunity to extend an olive branch to Atiku and both are expected to have a civil conversation and prioritise the greater good of the country.

Competent sources told THE WHISTLER that the President-elect may pay a similar visit to the candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, who defeated him in his political stronghold of Lagos State during the presidential election held on Saturday, February 25, 2023.

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In the presidential election, the outcome was closely contested, with the three leading candidates pulling massive votes from the electorate.

However, after the votes were counted, INEC declared that Tinubu satisfied the constitutional requirement to be declared president-elect despite rejection of the results by opposition political parties who alleged electoral fraud and failure of INEC to abide by its own regulations requiring transmission of the results from the polling units to a central server accessible by the public.

Despite threats by Atiku and Obi’s camps to challenge the outcome in court, Tinubu is visiting the former at his residence to seek his collaboration.

The visit is coming hours after INEC presented Tinubu with a certificate of return and a day after representatives of the ECOWAS Election Monitoring Team visited leading candidates in the election at their respective homes.

The ECOWAS delegation was led by Nigeria’s former president, Goodluck Jonathan, and ex-president John Mahama of Ghana, who both lost their re-election bids as sitting presidents in 2015 and 2017, respectively.

They appealed for calm among the candidates and advised INEC to make efforts to address the concerns raised by aggrieved parties in the election.