The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC PCC) has asked the United States President, Joe Biden, to “pick up the phone and add his voice” in congratulating the president-elect, Bola Tinubu.
The APC Council Director of New Media, Femi Fani-Kayode, stated this on his Twitter handle, adding that Nigeria deserved no less from the US government, as two countries of long, historic relationship.
SaharaReporters on Tuesday reported that world leaders including the United States President had not yet put a call across to Tinubu, who was declared of Nigeria’s February 25 presidential election.
This came as the election was widely acclaimed to be poorly conducted and rigged in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress.
In contrast to Buhari’s election victory in April 2015, Tinubu is yet to receive an official congratulation from world leaders including the US President weeks after being declared a winner.
On April 1, 2015, the then French President, François Hollande, the then United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and the then US President, Barack Obama were among the dignitaries who extended their congrats to Buhari.
Although for Tinubu, the US Mission in Nigeria has congratulated him. Meanwhile, the US President has not either called or issued a personal statement congratulating Nigeria’s president-elect.
In his reaction, Fani-Kayode, a former Minister of Aviation said, “Whether @JoeBiden calls to congratulate him or not @officialABAT is the President-elect of the biggest, richest, most populous, most advanced & most enlightened nation in Africa & the Western world’s biggest trading partner on the continent. They need us as much as we need them.
“Yes, the American State Department and the American Ambassador to Nigeria both congratulated Asiwaju. For this we are eternally grateful & it reflects a measure of respect.
“However, it’s time for Joe to pick up the phone & add his voice. We are a big nation: we deserve no less.”
SaharaReporters had on March 8 reported that Chatham House, an independent policy institute based in London, in an analysis by one of its fellows said the February 25 presidential election showed that the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC failed to learn new lessons.
The London-based institute had stressed that the electoral umpire failed to adhere to its own guidelines, which it enunciated before the poll, especially the one bordering on the uploading of results in real-time.
“The INEC’s performance and controversies over these results mean that the electoral reforms and lessons declared to have been learned were not fully applied and, as an electoral body, it was significantly less prepared than it claimed.
“The logistical failures of INEC and widespread delayed opening of polling units meant that voters who showed up at the polls early were frustrated and many voters and INEC staff were not able to locate their polling units for several hours,” Chatham House had stated.
The commission’s patchy deployment of technology in the use of a Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), Chatham House added, still being intensely scrutinised and criticised.
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