Group Fingers Foreign Involvement In Move To Truncate May 29 Handover Date

By Ayodele Oni

A Group, Peace and Stability Initiative (PSI) has alleged that some international pressure groups are planning to use fake reports to truncate the May 29 hand over date.

PSI in a statement on Friday, also fingered some aggrieved politicians in the country as their collaborators.

The statement signed on behalf of the group by its coordinator, Ali M. Ali  stated that “Since the result of the Presidential election was formally announced on March 1, 2023, there have been many insidious plots by some foreign agent provocateurs working in cahoots with their local collaborators masquerading as civil society groups and others to instigate large scale political uprising in Nigeria because they failed woefully in their predetermined agenda to influence the electoral outcome.

“These agents of destabilization have not relented in their evil plots even though we are just few days away to the May 29, 2023 inauguration of a new central government that will be led by the President-elect , Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“We salute the outgoing administration of President Muhammadu Buhari for the fidelity to the transition programme and its insistence on peaceful and orderly transfer of power in Nigeria.

“Intelligence reports indicate a new plot by local opposition elements goaded by a foreign union to release a harebrained,  skewed and  stage-managed final report on the 2023 General elections in Nigeria, with emphasis on the presidential election.

“The heavily slanted report, based on the views of biased  observers, will be released any moment from now. It shares the same denunciatory tone like the one released in March.

“The release  is deliberately timed to achieve two sinister objectives. One is to dampen the celebratory mood in our country ahead of the inauguration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and delegitimize the incoming All Progressives Congress government that will be led by him.

“Second is to intimidate and hope to influence  the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Court that has just commenced the process of adjudicating on the petitions before it.

“We are putting this busybody, meddlesome international development agency that has constituted itself into an interloper in our country’s internal affairs on notice that Nigeria is a sovereign state.

“It is no longer a vassal state, tied to the apron strings of neo-colonialists, that can be harassed by special foreign interests seeking to cause internal strife.

“We also view their planned action as contemptuous of our country’s judicial system as all litigations about the general elections are now before our courts for adjudication.

“We reiterate and maintain our earlier positions that the 2023 general elections in Nigeria was the most peaceful, transparent, free and fair election in Nigeria since 1999 as attested to by all non-partisan foreign and local observers.

“Among these are the African Union, ECOWAS, Commonwealth Observer Mission and the Nigerian Bar Association. The winner of the election scored 8.7 million votes.

“The major opposition parties recorded over 14 million votes combined. This speaks to a free, fair, competitive and credible process. Right now, there is an ongoing healthy bid for the Speakership of the House of Representatives.

“The opposition parties combined have more members than the ruling APC. And this was an election conducted contemporaneously with the presidential election.

“The latter through its empirically based findings by 1000 observers   found that 91.8 percent Nigerians rated the conduct of the presidential and National  Assembly elections, despite some lapses,  either as excellent or  satisfactory. Only a negligible 8.2 percent rated the umpire, INEC poor or very poor..

“We are not unmindful of the consistent evil agenda of foreign crisis merchants to precipitate huge political conflagration in Nigeria to make it easy for them to continue to plunder our land.

“The ongoing civil war in Sudan where nations are struggling to get their citizens out of Khartoum with attendant loss of lives and industrial scale destruction is another sad reminder of how external forces have perpetually turned Africa into conflict zone.

“Nigeria is too big and too important for Africa’s survival, to be used as another cannon fodder for self-serving conflict merchants.

“Since 1999, we have chosen democracy as a form of government with established and entrenched democratic institutions to address electoral grievances.

“Despite challenges and sometimes boisterous nature of our politics, Nigeria’s democracy and democratic culture are maturing.

“It can only get better and stronger to deliver better governance outcome to all Nigerians when it is nurtured and  protected by all men and women of goodwill.

“Since aggrieved parties that participated in the 2023 general elections have followed the rule of law by submitting  themselves to the election petition tribunals, we appeal once again to them and their foreign collaborators to allow the already activated process to run its full course without intimidation and undue external pressure. That is the only way to preserve the sovereign integrity of our country.”