August 14, 2018
Press Statement
PDP To APC: We’ll Dismantle Your Rigging Machine
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has told the All Progressives
Congress (APC) that it will henceforth vehemently dismantle its 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 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.
Furthermore, the PDP takes very strong consideration of the open boasts
and chest-thumping by officials of the Buhari Presidency and the APC,
particularly on their rigging of the Ekiti governorship and the federal
bye-elections in Bauchi, Katsina and Kogi states, where APC thugs were
allowed to freely use weapons against PDP supporters.
This is in addition to the unholy convergence of APC governors and
security goons in constituencies where elections are held to supervise
the free distribution of funds to buy votes, bribe electoral officers
and openly intimidate the people.
The PDP therefore resolves that in as much as it remains a law abiding
political party, conducting its affairs strictly within the ambit of our
nation’s electoral laws; the party will henceforth directly and
physically confront and resist the desperate and greedy power grabbers
from always having a field day in seizing our democratic institutions
and circumventing the rules during elections.
Consequently, the PDP directs all its state governors, officials at
state and zonal chapters, national and state assembly members and all
other elected leaders at all levels to get ready to move into Osun state
and provide all support necessary and germane in all the nooks and
crannies of Osun state in the forthcoming election.
Similarly, the PDP directs all its presidential aspirants to move all
their political machinery into Osun State within this period, as well as
get prepared to physically participate in the election process.
Our insistence as a party is for a level playing ground, a free, fair
and credible electoral process, where all votes will count just as our
party provided for General Buhari in 2015, that enabled him to be
elected as president.
However, we will not accept our respect for democratic tenets to be
taken as a mark of cowardice or weakness.
Finally, the PDP raises this as a wake-up call to all lovers of
democracy across our nation to rise in this spirit to safeguard our
democracy from all anti-democratic and oppressive forces represented by
the APC and the Buhari Presidency.
Signed:
Kola Ologbondiyan
National Publicity Secretary
