APC to Atiku: ‘It takes a thief to detect a thief’
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has responded to Abubakar Atiku, the opposition candidate in the February 25 presidential poll. Atiku had rejected the Court of Appeal judgment dismissing his petition against the election of incumbent President Bola Tinubu. He had equally stated that he would appeal the ruling at the Supreme Court.
In his response, Bala Ibrahim, APC’s director of publicity, faulted Atiku’s insistence that the INEC manipulated the election results to favour the declared winner – President Tinubu.
He said, “It takes a thief to detect a thief. He, who is in the business of manipulating things, will certainly be the first to complain if things are manipulated. I believe INEC has experts and ICT specialists who will surely check the thoroughness and foolproof nature of their equipment.
“It is not for Atiku, as an interested party, to tell INEC whether or not the equipment are technically perfect or fit for the operation they are deployed on. INEC is an independent organization that has the right to decide the type of technology and how it should be deployed. Atiku can’t stay at the sideline and dictate that a vehicle is not roadworthy when he is not a vehicle inspection officer.’’
He added, “As an interested party, I think he probably has a compromised mind or intention that INEC countered that is making him uncomfortable. That probably explains why he is complaining. In all the curriculum vitae of Atiku that I have gone through, everybody will attest to the fact that he has always been a politician through and through.
‘’He is a serial election contestant and a loser. There is nowhere in the CV that he is an ICT expert. So, I really don’t know where the word ‘compromise’ that he used for the BVAS technology is coming from.”
Ibrahim faulted Atiku’s description of the ruling as an ‘electoral banditry’, stating that such expression should not have come from a ‘statesman’ like him.
Apart from Atiku, another opposition presidential candidate Peter Obi equally rejected the judgment and had indicated his readiness to file an appeal against it.
