By The All Progressives Congress has come out strongly against a proposal by Nigeria Democratic Congress presidential candidate Peter Obi to set up an independent system for transmitting election results alongside the Independent National Electoral Commission ahead of 2027.
APC’s Response
APC National Publicity Secretary Felix Morka dismissed the plan as a sign of “unhinged desperation,” arguing that Obi has neither the legal standing, the technical infrastructure, nor the nationwide party structure required to run a parallel electoral operation.
Morka’s remarks came in reaction to Obi’s recent television appearance, where the former Anambra State governor said his campaign, along with other independent groups, would set up situation rooms to receive results transmitted directly from polling units, positioning the system as a way to independently verify figures uploaded to INEC’s Result Viewing portal.
Morka questioned the legal footing for Obi to take on a role constitutionally assigned to INEC. “Peter Obi of the NDC must be a political jester,” he said.
“He is a presidential candidate that also wants to be the electoral umpire, a role statutorily reserved to the Independent National Electoral Commission. Has he any locus to do that?”
Doubts Over Feasibility
Beyond the legal question, Morka raised doubts about whether Obi’s campaign could realistically pull off such an operation nationwide, pointing to the scale of technical infrastructure and manpower it would require.
“One, he doesn’t have the software, unless he means he is going to create his own software to do that. And if he does that, that will be creating utter confusion.
And he doesn’t have the capacity to do that,” Morka said. He went further, questioning whether Obi’s campaign has the ground presence needed.
“I bet you, Peter Obi will not have agents in all the polling units in this country. He doesn’t. So I don’t know how he’s going to go about it.”
Morka pushed the criticism further with a pointed jab, suggesting Obi might as well skip the process entirely. “Mr. Obi shouldn’t just stop at creating a parallel IReV; he might as well go ahead, today, and declare himself winner ahead of the 2027 presidential election. That’s the stuff unhinged desperation is made of,” he said.
Broader Criticism of Opposition Policy
Morka didn’t stop at the result transmission plan, extending his criticism to Obi’s broader policy positions, particularly around petrol subsidy removal, accusing him of failing to offer concrete alternatives to President Bola Tinubu’s economic reform agenda.
He argued that both Obi and African Democratic Congress presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar are struggling to carve out policy positions distinct from those of the Tinubu administration.
“You see Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, the problem they have right now is that they are struggling to differentiate their policy offering from that of Asiwaju,” Morka said
“And they can’t do it easily, because Asiwaju’s plan and his programme is almost ironclad in both pragmatism and value. But these guys are merely speculative.”
He also took aim at Obi’s pledge to bring down petrol prices, saying the candidate had failed to explain how he would actually deliver on it.
“You know, when he was asked what he meant by that, he couldn’t explain. A lot of things he said in that interview, like his fuel subsidy plan, it’s not understandable. I don’t know anybody who understood what he said. He just said, ‘I’m going to bring the price of petrol down,'” Morka said.
He added that he sometimes deliberately avoids responding to Obi’s statements, arguing that doing so risks lending undue credibility to comments he views as incoherent.
“If I respond to Peter Obi now, I would be injecting sense into his nonsense, because it’s very incoherent in what he says,” he said.
“Sometimes, I refrain from responding to these snippets from Peter Obi, because when I do, I will be the one making it look like he is saying something that is worth responding to. Sometimes I just ignore them, because, you know, they don’t make any sense.”
