The National Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) Shehu Gabam, says the party will not contest the outcome of the February 25 presidential election.
Recall that the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Tinubu was declared winner of the poll.
In an interview with newsmen at the weekend, Gabam said the SDP did very well in the presidential and National Assembly elections.
In his words, “The SDP did very well in the presidential and National Assembly elections. In terms of performance, The All Progressives Congress is the party in power. They (APC) have the government and every resource at their disposal. The Peoples Democratic Party has governors, senators and members of House of Representatives and other streams of revenue. The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, was a governor twice. He is the chairman of many establishments, including banks. He was a former vice-presidential candidate. So, he had the advantage of resources available to him.
“Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party was a two-term governor. He was a minister; he was on the board of many establishments. He also had resources available to him to spend. If you look at what the political parties got out of the very chaotic situation, the votes got by SDP were the only heart-loving votes because we had no money to buy anybody. People voted for us because we defended the credibility of the party; we defended the image of the SDP. We changed the narrative of the party and we revamped the party. We are one of the best and we were everywhere. We were in every media space, talking about issues.
“INEC has declared a winner and some other parties have said they are going to challenge it in court. I think it is fair to allow the court to determine whether the decision of INEC was right or wrong. We have admitted outright that there were lots of flaws on the part of INEC even when we met with them. We said that the process would not stand because it (process) was against the assurance of the President to conduct free and fair elections. The presidential election cannot be categorised as free and fair. However, the country must move on, some things have to give way. Decency, patriotism must prevail and based on this, we want peace in Nigeria; we don’t want any elements to disrupt the peace in the country. Election is a continuous exercise. Anybody can be president at any given time, but we should allow the judiciary to settle the scores rather than taking the laws into our hands. As patriotic Nigerians, we don’t want to overheat the polity.”
