A civil society organisation, Centre for Leadership and Justice, has called on politicians to stop heating the polity following the unfolding outcome of Saturday’s presidential election.

Convener of Centre for Leadership and Justice, Mr Emmanuel Umohinyang, said utterance by political stakeholders was capable of setting the country on fire.

He stated this against the backdrop of calls by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP), and African Democratic Congress (ADC) that the 2023 general election be cancelled over alleged irregularities that have marred the exercise across the country.

But Umohinyang said any aggrieved party should approach the court instead of calling for the cancellation of the election.

He said, “I think that if the parties you have mentioned are aggrieved or do not agree with what has been declared it is incumbent on them to approach the election petition tribunal. Fortunately, the Court of Appeal has original jurisdiction in dealing with issues of this kind.

“I do not agree that the election should be cancelled and my reasons are very simple. What they had put out had been that they were incidents of over-voting. They cited the example of Ekiti State, it is not enough to ask for an election to be cancelled just because you do not agree with certain parameters because a particular candidate is leading.

DG APC campaign council, Gov Lalong congratulates President elect Bola Tinubu

“The election you are complaining of, is it not this same INEC that conducted the election in Lagos where LP’s Peter Obi won? Is it not this same INEC that conducted the election in Katsina where PDP’s Atiku Abubakar won in the President’s home state?”

While noting that politics is all about numbers, he said the party with the highest number of votes spread across two/third states and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja would emerge victorious at the end of the collation.

Umohinyang also took a swipe at former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had in an open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari, slammed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) alleged compromise in the electoral process and demanded to reschedule the contentious polls.

According to Umohinyang, the era of Obasanjo’s administration witnessed the worst elections in the nation’s history, saying he (Obasanjo) should not be the one talking about the descent election.

“If there is anybody who should speak about this election and comment about the issues of rigging, it shouldn’t be Obasanjo because under his watch, in the 2003 election, Nigeria was a war zone. Also in 2007, he introduced the phrase do-or-die politics.

“He cannot be the one writing a letter to a man like President Muhammadu Buhari, who has consistently said that he will leave a legacy of a free, fair, and transparent election. Writing a letter to Buhari is an insult, it is a slap to decency, and it has no place in a modern democracy.”