Accept Supreme Court verdict, Murray-Bruce tells Atiku

A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Senator Ben Murray-Bruce has called on his party’s presidential candidate in the February election Atiku Abubakar to accept the decision of the Supreme Court.

The apex court on Thursday dismissed all appeals against President Bola Tinubu’s victory, upholding the decision of the tribunal which sat at the Court of Appeal in Abuja.

The court said it had no jurisdiction to receive fresh evidence from Atiku.

Reacting to the judgement in a statement posted on X, Murray-Bruce congratulated Tinubu and urged Atiku to allow the controversy end.

He said, “The Supreme Court has now ruled on the appeal brought by my party and its Presidential candidate. I do not comment on the rightness or wrongness of the judgment, except to say that as a law-abiding and patriotic citizen of Nigeria, it is accepted that the Supreme Court is final.

“Therefore, the judgment should be accepted by all Nigerians as settling all the issues of contention and the matter of who won the Presidential election held on February 25, 2023. Therefore, I call on the Peoples Democratic Party and its Presidential candidate, Waziri Atiku Abubakar, to accept the judgment and let this controversy end.

“I congratulate President Bola Tinubu and the people of Nigeria, who now have clarity for the future. Perhaps we can now focus on the task of building our nation and growing our economy to enable it to deliver a decent living and opportunities for positive human development for all Nigerians, especially the masses.”

Murray-Bruce, who was senator from 2015 to 2019, urged the PDP to learn from its errors.

“To the Peoples Democratic Party, let us learn from the disunity that cost us this election. If a united opposition could not defeat the ruling All Progressives Congress in 2019, we showed an extreme lack of judgment to have allowed division within our ranks in 2022-2023. Hopefully, we can make better decisions for the future,” he wrote.