Ken Pela, the Delta State gubernatorial candidate on the platform of the Labour Party (LP), has faulted President Muhammadu Buhari on the reasons the opposition political parties ‘lost’ the 2023 presidential election.
It will be recalled that the president, while speaking on the outcome of the election on Thursday, said the opposition parties lost the election earlier in the year as a result of over-confidence, complacency and bad tactics, saying that the opposition parties had already started telling foreign bodies that they would defeat the ruling party even before the election proper.
“They were already telling their foreign backers that they would defeat the APC. They are finding it hard to convince those who supported them from the outside why they are unable to beat us,” he said.
“A combination of overconfidence, complacency and bad tactical moves made them lose, plain and clear. This has created more problems in their camp. Why did they fail to remove us?
While in a chat with our correspondent on the issue, Pela said the president was wrong to have assumed that the ruling party was declared winner in the election because the opposition was over confidence or that they deployed wrong tactics.
Pela however admitted that a number of factors could have made them to be so confident, declaring that the ‘false’ promise by the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the quality of their own confiscate made not only them but Nigerians to be confident of a change in the country.
“The president is not right in his assessment but let us say that we are over confident because we thought that we had a electoral body that would live up to their earlier promise of a credible poll.
“We, including all Nigerians, were over confident because we thought that INEC will walk their talk and conduct elections where the votes of Nigerians will count.
“We were over confident because we believe we paraded leaders that could have turned the country around if results were truly declared,” he said.
Speaking on the purported wrong tactics, Pela said agreed with the president, saying the opposition (LP) deployed that because they failed to rig.
“What did he mean by wrong tactics? Ok we used wrong tactics because we don’t believe in rigging and decided not to rig and manipulate results as they did and declared themselves winner.
“We deployed wrong tactics because we decided not to go against Electoral Act all in a bid to win as they did; it was unfortunate that such could be said but that is it,” he said.
Recall that INEC declared Bola Tinubu of the APC winner of the 2023 presidential election, defeating Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) in the process.
