Onoh derides Melaye for disrupting collation process, says Nigeria’s unity more important

Dr. Josef Onoh of the Bola Tinubu Presidential Campaign in the South East has criticized Senator Dino Melaye, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national collation agent, for attempting to disrupt the ongoing collation of the presidential election in Abuja.

The Guardian reported that Melaye and other collation agents from several political parties, objected to the methodology being used in announcing the results of the election.

The parties, including the main opposition PDP, Labour Party, Action Alliance (AA), New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), and African Democratic Congress (ADC), among others, insisted that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must instruct the collation officers to upload the results from the polling units to the Commission’s server even before the manual collation takes place.

They alleged that the move by INEC to announce the results manually without the result copies from polling units uploaded online was an attempt to compromise the process.

Melaye and other party agents would eventually walk out of the collation centre in Abuja.

Onoh, in a statement made available to The Guardian, called Melaye a leopard who will never change his spots, adding that the PDP agent was still suffering from a rare variant of lycanthropy and ecstasy whose only cure can be found in a veterinary clinic, not at the INEC collation centre. He expressed wonder as to why Melaye was repeating a script that failed to yield results in 2015. Onoh went on to state that Tinubu was poised to win the election, and the opposition’s victories in APC’s major strongholds such as Lagos and Katsina were not enough to stop the moving victory train.

“Their victory is just like Saudi Arabia’s victory over Argentina. In the end Argentina won the golden world cup while Saudi-11Arabia got knocked out in the group stage. So we will knock them out,” said Onoh, referring to the group stage victory of Saudi Arabia over Argentina at the last FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

The Saudis, despite the win over the South Americans, still failed to progress past the group stage, while the Argentines advanced and went on to claim a third FIFA World Cup title.

Onoh refrained from commenting on former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s letter, noting that he respected the statesman as a great ambassador of Nigeria. However, he urged Obasanjo to act as a peacemaker and not be dragged into politics of division by the opposition.

Regarding Pastor Chris Oyahkilome’s claim that the next president of Nigeria was mentioned in the Bible, Onoh said that the Pastor was referring to the Labour Party presidential candidate but forgot that their candidate was also mentioned in the Bible.

Onoh stated that Nigeria’s unity was more important than any individual or interest, and any aggrieved party could seek legal redress without promoting inciting comments.

“Be rest assured that we will defend to any length within the ambient of the law our mandate and as we promote renewed hope for Nigeria it also includes renewed hope in our mind-set and way of life to foster peace and unity and be assured that we shall hold accountable any element, person, groups not limited to self-acclaimed untouchable characters who attempt, attempted, contributed, promoted not limited to inciting Nigerians to derail the democratic process of our great nation in the course of this election,” Onoh said.