The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, has maintained that he won the poll despite admitting that he does not have evidence to support the claim.
Obi made the statement during an interview with the BBC, where he was asked whether he still believed he emerged victorious after the courts rejected his challenge to the election results.
The former Anambra State governor contested the election under the platform of the Labour Party and finished third with 6,101,533 votes.
President Bola Tinubu, who ran on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, was declared the winner after securing 8,794,726 votes, while the Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Atiku Abubakar, came second with 6,984,520 votes.
Shortly after the February 2023 election, Obi claimed he had won the presidential contest and said he would establish his position through legal proceedings.
He subsequently approached the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, challenging the outcome and alleging widespread irregularities in the conduct of the election.
However, in September 2023, the tribunal dismissed his petition, ruling that he had failed to prove the allegations of electoral malpractice and other grounds upon which he sought to overturn the result.
The Supreme Court later affirmed Tinubu’s victory in October 2023 after dismissing appeals filed by Obi and Atiku.
Despite the judicial decisions, Obi told the BBC that he continued to hold the view that he won the election.
“Well, quite frankly, I don’t like going back to the past. I still say what I said,” he said.
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The interviewer then asked Obi whether he had evidence to substantiate his claim that he won the election.
In response, the former governor acknowledged that he did not have evidence to prove the assertion but insisted that his position remained unchanged.
“There is no evidence. Everything is not based on evidence. I won the election, and that is where I will end,” he said.
Obi’s latest comments come after the courts had previously ruled against his legal challenge to the 2023 presidential election outcome.