Nigeria Content Online

The vice
presidential candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in last
Saturday’s presidential election, John Odigie-Oyegun yesterday
expressed shock at the poor performance of his party in the election,
saying the figure ascribed to it looks unreal.

He, however, said
the party hierarchy will meet next week, after the governorship and
state house of assembly polls to consider its response to the result of
the presidential election.

The ANPP candidate,
Ibrahim Shekarau, came a distant fourth position in the election with a
total score of 917,012 votes, according to the result announced by the
Independent National Electoral Commission on Monday.

President Goodluck
Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) polled 22,469,484;
Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change, 12,214,853;
and Nuhu Ribadu of the Action Congress of Nigeria, 2,790,978.

But Mr Oyegun, in
an interview, said the ANPP’s poor outing could not be divorced from
text messages and misinformation sent out by some unknown persons about
24 hours before the poll.

He explained that
the message specifically stated that some candidates had withdrawn from
the presidential contest to pave way for others, adding that even some
PDP members were involved in it.

“We still don’t
understand. I was surprised about the figure we got. But I think it can
also be attributed to text messages going round before the election
that some candidates were no longer running,” he said. “In fact, the
night before, the messages were going round that everybody must vote
for a particular candidate. I am not guessing. It was what I heard,
myself. That changed the picture of the whole thing and the support for
us just collapsed. So, the whole thing looks unreal, uncanny to me.”

No decision on result

Asked if the party
would have got more votes if the alleged messages were not sent out, Mr
Oyegun said, “Oh naturally! Of course!”

The vice
presidential candidate, who could not say exactly if the ANPP would
challenge the result of the presidential contest in court, said the
party’s national leadership will meet next week to study the conduct
and result of the election before taking a stand.

“We’ve not got to that stage (of going to the court),” he said.
“We’ve to know exactly what happened. We’ll meet Tuesday next week
after the governorship election to assess the total situation, that is,
if the situation in the country will allow for the next election. We
need explanations and I hope we will get to the bottom of it.”