Nigeria's presidential race runner-up calls polls results 'a rape of democracy'

The candidate of Nigeria's main opposition party called the victory of the ruling party's contender at presidential polls "a rape of democracy" on Thursday (Mar. 2nd).

Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party came second with 6.9 million votes, behind Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress who polled over eight million votes, while Peter Obi of Labour came third with 6.1 million votes.

"The dreams and aspirations of Nigerians who braised all the challenges to go and cast their vote on a Saturday 25th February 2023 were shattered by the conduct of Independent National Election Commission (INEC) who failed woefully to live up to its exceptions," he said.

He called the electoral commission's publication of the results as they stand a "rape of democracy".

Insisting he still couldn't "understand why the electoral umpire was in such a hurry to conclude collation and announcement of the result, given the number of complaints and irregularities of bypassing of the BVAS (ed note. facial recognition procedure), failure of uploading the IREV (ed note. result uploading system), and unprecedented cancellations and disfranchisement of millions of voters in breach of the electorate and the commission's own guidelines", the polls had been "a rape of democracy."

Abubakar said he was consulting lawyers to decide on his next steps.

"Our lawyers are studying the results of the election and we await their advice... and the party will meet and we'll decide the next line of action," he told journalists.

Saturday's election was Abubakar's sixth unsuccessful attempt at the presidency.