Obi and Bruce-Murray meet with UK politicians in what is seen as PDP charm offensive

PEOPLES Democratic Party (PDP) leaders Peter Obi and Senator Ben Bruce-Murray have arrived in the UK and entered into a series of meetings with politicians in what appears to be a campaign aimed at getting backing for their appeal against Nigeria's election results.

In February, Nigeria held presidential elections in which former vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar stood as the PDP candidate, with Mr Obi as his running mate. After the elections, the Independent national Electoral Commission, declared incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC)  the winner with 15.2m votes compared with 11.3m for votes for Alhaji Abubakar.

However, the PDP is challenging the elections in court, claiming that do not represent a true picture of the votes cast. To complicate matters further, the government has suspended the chief justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen amid claims that he is pro-PDP and replaced him with acting chief judge Tanko Mohammed, who is thought to be pro-APC.

If the election appeal gets as far as the Supreme Court, the chief justice of the federation will have to adjudicate on the matter and both parties are thus keen on having their man in place. With all these intrigues playing out, Mr Obi and Senator Bruce-Murray, the lawmaker representing Bayelsa East Senatorial District, arrived in London this week and went into a series of high profile meetings.

Among the UK politicians they met with were Boris Johnson MP; Lord Marland, the lord chairman of the Commonwealth, Rory Stewart, MP, the minister of state for justice with responsibility for prisons and the minister for Africa, Harriet Baldwin.  At the various meetings, Mr Obi, stressed the need to support Nigeria in turning around the economy, so the country can deal with unemployment.

He also called on them to support the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in Nigeria. According to Mr Obi, what should be of uppermost in the minds of all Nigerians and men of goodwill was how to harness the abundant human and natural resources in the country for the benefit of the entire people and not for a select few.

In his reply, Mr Johnson expressed support for the Nigerian judiciary and said he would press for the observance of the rule of law to be followed even as he declared that Nigeria as a country needs to promote true democratic values to achieve true greatness. So far, the UK has accepted the results of the Nigerian elections as free and fair with Prime Minister Theresa May congratulating President Buhari.