APC Discovers Election Was Rigged Immediately After Losing It, Nation Marvels at Timing

In a stunning display of forensic accuracy, the All Progressives Congress has determined, within hours of losing the Osun governorship election, that the entire exercise was compromised. The party's investigative powers, dormant throughout campaign season, activated instantly and precisely at the moment the scoreboard read unfavourably, proving once again that Nigerian political parties possess only one detection instrument, and it is calibrated exclusively to defeat.

INEC, the party now insists, mysteriously forgot how to count only in Osun, only on that day, and only in the local governments where Adeleke won. In the nineteen LGAs the APC lost, the commission is apparently incompetent. In the eleven it didn't, the same commission, using the same machines, staffed by the same officials, functioned perfectly. Nigerians have been asked to accept that INEC operates two separate electoral systems simultaneously, one accurate, one fraudulent, and that only the losing party can distinguish between them, using a method science has yet to name.

This is, of course, sacred tradition. Nigerian democracy has one unbroken rule: whoever loses did not actually lose, they were merely denied. The result is never the result. It is a rough draft, submitted for review by whichever party feels aggrieved, with the tribunal serving as editor. Adeleke's 66,252-vote margin has therefore been reclassified from "landslide" to "matter under litigation," a linguistic downgrade Nigerian courts perform with remarkable consistency.

Legal experts confirm the challenge will proceed through the traditional stages: outrage, petition, tribunal, appeal, Supreme Court, and finally, quiet acceptance roughly one year after everyone has stopped caring. By the time judgment arrives, Adeleke will have governed long enough that overturning it would require evicting him from an office he has already fully moved into, curtains and all.

At press time, the APC maintained that democracy must be protected, preferably by whichever result protects the APC.