OSUN GOV POLL: PDP vows to confront, pull down APC rigging system

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has revealed how it is going to henceforth dismantle the ruling All Progressives Congress’ (APC’s) alleged election rigging strategy.

The opposition party in a statement on Tuesday by its national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, vowed that it was going to vehemently put a stop to APC’s rigging machinery in future elections, beginning with the Osun governorship election next month.

The party says that now that it has become manifest to Nigerians and all parties that the APC is only interested in rigging elections brazenly, it will henceforth contend with APC, head to head, means to means, scheme to scheme, shenanigan for shenanigan, in all ramifications and magnitude, to discomfit them in all coming elections in the country.

The PDP said it has “thoroughly reviewed all infractions, barefaced suppression, unleashing of violence and unabashed use of security forces and compromised electoral officers to rig elections against it since the assumption of office of President Muhammadu Buhari and vowed to never again to allow the APC and its Federal Government to continue to use foul means to usurp power as it has done in the past and merely ask the PDP to go to court. Never!

“The PDP has particularly reviewed the rigging of Edo State governorship election in 2016, the blatant rigging of the July 14, 2018 Ekiti State governorship election and the last Saturday’s federal constituency bye-elections in Bauchi, Katsina and Kogi states.

“The review shows that the PDP won in all the elections but was viciously manipulated out by the APC- controlled Federal Government through the instrumentality of violence against PDP agents and supporters, vote buying, use of thugs, ballot snatching, harassment, arrests, maiming and even killing of PDP supporters in addition to use of compromised electoral officers to cancel votes belonging to the PDP, alter results from polling centers and then return APC candidates as winners.”

In another statement on Tuesday, the PDP described the claim by the ruling party that its members plan to attack APC senators as fabrications.

It said the claim was laughable, childish and shows that the “Buhari Presidency and the ruling party have come to a wits end in their plot to illegally impeach Senate President Bukola Saraki and Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu.”

The party says the APC is hallucinating by linking it with any attempt to attack anybody, including senators, whereas Nigerians are aware that, if anything, it is the APC that has been involved in sponsoring violence and attacks in the residences of the presiding officers of the Senate as well as in the National Assembly.

“Equally derisory is the APC’s claims that it is in talks with some PDP senators to get a two third vote to impeach the Senate presiding officers when it is public knowledge that all PDP senators are loyal to their party and had already pledged their loyalty to the presiding officer which they elected by themselves.

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“It is therefore foolhardiness for the leadership of the APC, to contemplate a capacity to impeach the presiding officers of the National Assembly whereas they are neither senators or members of the House of Representatives.

“It is also funny that rather than lobby senators and members on their party position, if they have any, the APC leadership toed the path of brigandage, claiming to have powers to upturn or upstage the leadership that it did not ab-initio bring into existence.

“Confronted by the realities of its shameful adventure, the APC leadership has now turned around in its trademark shambolic character to begin to look for scapegoats and who to hold responsible for their failures,” PDP said.

 

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