***Vows to independently verify election results
***rules out stepping down for Atiku
Isaac Samuel
The presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi, has accused former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, of working against him during the 2023 presidential election, saying his experience from the poll has forced him to adopt a different strategy ahead of the 2027 election.
Obi said his campaign would no longer rely solely on assurances from the electoral commission, disclosing plans to establish an independent result-transmission and monitoring system that would receive results directly from polling units and transmit them to his campaign situation room.
The former Anambra State governor made the disclosures on Thursday during an interview with Arise Television, in which he also addressed the possibility of an opposition alliance, his relationship with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the credibility of the electoral process.
According to Obi, the proposed system would operate alongside INEC’s official result-transmission platform, allowing his team to independently compare results generated at polling units with those transmitted through the commission’s system.
He said the objective was to ensure that results eventually declared at different levels could be traced to what voters actually produced at the polling units.
“We must make sure that at every polling unit, the votes are counted, the votes are recorded properly, the votes are transmitted properly,” Obi said.
“And we will have even a dual transmission so that as it’s going to the proper designated INEC portal, it’s also being transmitted where the people can see it.”
Explaining the thinking behind the proposed arrangement, Obi said the 2023 presidential election had taught him that opposition candidates could not afford to depend entirely on the electoral commission’s assurances.
“In 2023, we took things for granted. We believed INEC. We believed what they said they would do,” he said.
He alleged that Yakubu had assured Nigerians and the international community that the commission would conduct a credible election but subsequently worked for his political opponents.
“The INEC Chairman convinced the world that he would do the right thing, when, in fact, he was working for the opposition,” Obi alleged.
The NDC candidate did not provide evidence in the interview to substantiate the allegation against the INEC chairman.
His comments come nearly three years after the 2023 presidential election, in which Obi, then the Labour Party candidate, and Atiku, the Peoples Democratic Party candidate, separately challenged President Bola Tinubu’s victory at the election tribunal.
The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal dismissed their petitions in September 2023, while the Supreme Court subsequently affirmed Tinubu’s election in October of the same year.
Obi said his approach in 2027 would therefore be based on independent verification rather than trust alone.
“This time, we will only trust them by doing the right thing ourselves,” he said.
The proposed system could give Obi’s campaign its own stream of polling unit-level information with which to monitor the official electoral process.
He said the arrangement would not amount to establishing a parallel electoral commission, arguing that political parties and other organisations should be able to monitor the process independently.
Asked whether establishing more IReV-like systems across the country amounted to creating a parallel result-transmission platform, Obi disagreed.
“All we are saying is that this time around, we will make sure that in every polling unit, we must have a system that transmits to our own situation room the correct results,” he said.
Obi said other organisations could equally establish similar systems, stressing that the ultimate objective was to make it difficult for figures that did not originate from polling units to emerge during collation.
“And I’m sure there are so many other agencies that intend to do the same thing. So we’re not going to have a situation where somebody pronounces something that didn’t emanate from the polling unit,” he said.
“Our task is to make sure that the right things are done.”
On the growing discussion about an opposition alliance and whether he would step down for Atiku, Obi said the issue could no longer be settled by the individual politicians involved.
He argued that both men were now presidential candidates of different political parties and that any arrangement would have to be negotiated by the parties.
He said: “Do you know where we are now? No, you tell me. Where are we now? I’m a candidate. Yes. So my leader Atiku is a candidate of another party. So you’re talking about two parties coming together.
“It’s no longer me or him. You’re not talking about parties coming together.”
Obi’s comments amount to a rejection of the suggestion that he could simply withdraw his candidacy in favour of Atiku through a personal agreement.
He said the situation had evolved beyond individual ambitions because the different parties involved had already produced candidates.
“All those parties have candidates. So it’s a discussion. There is no longer me as Peter talking,” he said.
He likened the proposed opposition arrangement to the merger of two corporations, arguing that the leadership structures of the organisations would have to determine how such a union would work.
“It’s like a situation where you have two corporations trying to come together. It’s no longer something the two CEOs go to a drink and say, we’re going to work together,” Obi said.
“They need to look at, how do we bring these two corporations together?”
‘I was never offered Atiku’s running mate slot’
Obi also rejected claims that he had been offered the opportunity to become Atiku’s running mate and declined it.
He said such an offer had never formally been made to him, insisting that he was not even in a political position where such an offer could have been made.
“Who said so? Where? I wasn’t even in any party where that offer was on the table. I wasn’t even in a position where it was being offered and I refused,” he said.
The issue has remained one of the contentious questions surrounding opposition realignment ahead of 2027, particularly as politicians who previously contested against one another seek ways of confronting the ruling All Progressives Congress.
Obi and Atiku were running mates on the PDP platform in the 2019 presidential election before Obi left the party and later contested the 2023 election on the Labour Party platform.
Beyond the question of who emerges as the opposition’s presidential standard-bearer, Obi sought to frame the 2027 contest as a broader struggle over the direction of the country.
He said the election should not be reduced to a contest between political parties, but should be viewed as a decision by Nigerians over the kind of government they want.
He also pointed to Ghana and other countries as examples of places where transparent elections were possible, suggesting that Nigeria could strengthen its own electoral process if the necessary safeguards were put in place.
