The Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in last week’s election, Atiku Abubakar, is seeking the unfreezing of opposition politicians’ bank accounts, if peace is to prevail in forthcoming elections, it has been learnt.
But he is still going to the court to push for the reversal of the presidential election results that showed that President Muhammadu Buhari won.
Atiku’s demand for unfreezing of accounts is part of a six-point demand he made to the Federal Government through the General Abdulsalam Abubakar National Peace Committee.
It was gathered that the committee is seeking to douse the tension generated by the last presidential election.
Another major demand presented to the former Head of State and Chairman of the National Peace Committee, (NPC) and his team was the demilitarisarion of subsequent polls.
Gen. Abubakar led members of the committee to a meeting with Atiku and his running mate, Mr. Peter Obi in Abuja Friday night.
As a prelude to the committee meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari government with the demands, it was gathered that General Abdusalam and his team pleaded with the PDP flag bearer to avoid anything that could jeopardise the nation’s peaceful co-existence.
Other demands by Atiku were:
*That accreditation of voters should take place before voting in subsequent elections.
*That there should be no deployment of the military in subsequent elections.
* That IndependentNational Electoral Commission (INEC) should open its back end server to all participating parties.
*That there should be a release of all politicians detained illegally by Federal Government (FG).
A source at the meeting disclosed that Atiku “warned that tensions were building up in the land.”
NPC team included Cardinal John Onaiyekan, Bishop Kukah and Rev. Fr Atta Barkindo.
Atiku and his team informed the group that the election of Feb 23 was the worst in 20 years since the country returned to democratic rule. and that it was marked by brazen rigging with no consideration to the will of the people.
They listed the following as issues they had with the Presidential polls:
*Deployment of the military was unconstitutional and in breach of Supreme Court judgement.
*That resultantly, a lot of malpractices between the INEC officers, the ruling party and the military took place to undermine the votes/voters of the PDP.
*That there was collaboration between INEC and Federal Government to undermine the sanctity of the votes of the people.
*That this is the worst election in 20 years.
*That there was no improvement from 2015.