Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, the vice presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), has called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola, to boycott the inauguration ceremony of President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu on May 29, 2023.

Baba-Ahmed made the appeal in an interview on Channels Television on Friday, citing the fact that Tinubu’s ticket has not yet met constitutional requirements and that swearing in such a ticket would be a violation of democracy.

Baba-Ahmed further added that the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu, should not have issued a certificate of return to Tinubu, as the process that produced him as president-elect was flawed.

Baba-Ahmed said, “Swearing in a ticket that has not met the constitutional requirements of the constitution… Whoever does not meet the constitutional requirements must never be sworn in.”

Baba-Ahmed had earlier made the same call on March 22nd during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, where he called on Buhari and the Chief Justice not to swear in Tinubu, whom INEC had declared as the president-elect. He insisted that declaring Tinubu a winner and issuing him a certificate of return was against the constitution.

However, Baba-Ahmed’s earlier call met with criticisms from Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka. Soyinka described Baba-Ahmed’s pronouncement as unacceptable, saying that it alienates the people and is a ‘fascistic language’.

Soyinka further added, “The supreme court is an institution we should all refer to sooner or later, if not today, but tomorrow, if not this election, the next; but Datti kept saying, no, the supreme court has got, in its wisdom, to agree with me: that is what is known as fascistic language; it is not acceptable.”

Soyinka also expressed concern about the alleged complaint by him of people not following “instructions,” clarifying that he is not a member of the Labour Party and that giving “instructions” cannot be his role. He further stated that he remained concerned about the alleged physical violence inflicted on those designated “strangers” in Lagos during the gubernatorial elections.