PDP claims Buhari has confessed to rigging presidential elections

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have accused President Muhammadu Buhari’s of confessing to using his influence to manipulate the February 23 presidential election.

The party further alleged that Buhari’s statement that he will not manipulate the March 23 governorship supplementary elections was also a ploy to divert public attention from the All Progressive Congress (APC) “rigging plots” ahead of the supplementary elections.

Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, made this proclamation in a statement on Monday.

Ologbondiyan specified that the presidency’s ‘confession’ that APC members ”are mounting pressure” on President Buhari to help them to rig the supplementary elections further confirms the Buhari Presidency’s “manipulative and rigging capacity, including militarisation of the electoral process, instigating of violence and alteration of results, as were freely used by the APC in the Presidential election”.

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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has scheduled the supplementary elections for March 23 in six states (Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kano, Plateau and Sokoto) where elections were declared inconclusive.

The PDP had being in the lead in five of the six states where the elections had been declared inconclusive by INEC.

The PDP spokesperson has called on Nigerians, especially those in states where the supplementary elections have been scheduled to hold, to be wary of what he described as the antics of the Buhari Presidency.

“Nigerians can recall that ahead of the Presidential and National Assembly elections, President Buhari had promised to allow for a free, fair, transparent and credible process, only for his Presidency and party, the APC, to engage in downright manipulations at INEC, deployment of military and thugs to intimidate and suppress voters, as well as outright alteration of results delivered from the polling units.

“President Buhari cannot exonerate himself of the harm inflicted on our polity by the deployment of soldiers in the 2019 general elections, as nobody deploys the military except the President and Commander-in-Chief.

“Now that President Buhari, in his official capacity, has come out to state that he will not intervene in the March 23 Supplementary election. We ask, is Mr President assuring Nigerians that any ‘soldier’ seen directly involved in the rerun election is fake and should be treated as such?”

The opposition party called on the military to note the import of the statement by the Presidency “and steer clear of the supplementary elections”.

The party also cautioned INEC officials to note that Nigerians are very eager about the outcome of the supplementary elections, “given that the PDP is already leading in these states”.

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