Peter Obi says he’s being pressured to leave the country

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, says he is being pressured to leave the country amid increased controversy over the outcome of the Feb. 25 presidential elections.

Mr Obi and the candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, rejected the official results which put Bola Tinubu of the ruling APC as president-elect. The election was marred by violence, voter suppression and irregularities in the handling of results.

Appeals filed by the two opposition candidates at the election tribunal, seeking the nullification of the outcome, have not doused controversy, with supporters of the two sides continuing to clash online and in the media.

Last week, the vice-presidential candidate of the LP, Datti Baba-Ahmed, said on television that inaugurating Mr Tinubu would be unconstitutional and would put an end Nigeria’s democracy. The federal government said Mr Baba-Ahmed’s remark was “treasonable, a claim rejected by legal experts.

– New developments to note

Mr Obi came under fire this week after a Peoples Gazette’s report of a phone conversation quoted the LP candidate as urging the influential head of Living Faith, David Oyedepo, to help rally Christian votes on the eve of the election to counter a “religious war”, in an apparent reference to the ruling party’s choice of same-Muslim faith ticket.

Mr Obi said the tape was “fake” but the newspaper defended its reporting and said it stood by the story.

The Labour Party leader said the tape and the federal government’s warning were part of efforts by the government and the ruling party to “divert our attention from our blatantly stolen mandate”.

He said he was also pressured to leave the country.

“These have come and continued to manifest in different ways, such as the malicious accusation of the Minister of Information, Mr Lai Mohammed, the circulation of a fake doctored audio call, and a pressure on me to leave the country,” he said in a Twitter post on Wednesday.

He did not say who asked him to leave the country. Mr Tinubu is planned to be sworn into office on May 29.