Press Statement
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has told the All Progressives
Congress (APC) that its “coup” against democracy in Nigeria cannot
stand, in spite of its orchestration of violence, killings and forceful
seizure of electoral processes.
The PDP insists that no amount of blackmail, innuendos, threats and
direct attacks by the APC will make it to drop its people-based demands
for electoral reforms that will return our country to the democratic
practice that engenders respect to the rights of our citizens for a
free, fair, clean, clear and credible elections.
The party alerts that APC’s blackmail against the PDP is part of its
diversionary tactics to enable it sustain its “coup” against democracy
through the use of state apparatus of power and paid hoodlums to unleash
brute force, arbitrary arrests, bloodletting and killings to terrorize
and suppress Nigerians, snatch their franchise and continue to seize
power with impunity.
Nigerians can recall the malicious trajectory in how the APC used
firearm to seize power in Ekiti State in 2018; unleashed cudgels in the
March 2019 governorship election in Kano, and the latest being the
unbridling of indescribable bloodletting, forceful invasion of polling
units, killing of voters and the horrendous deployment of police
helicopter in the November 2019 governorship and senatorial elections in
Bayelsa and Kogi states.
This reign of violence has been followed with annexation of the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), alteration of election
results, violation of constitutional provisions and threats to
institutions of democracy including political parties, the judiciary and
civil society groups.
Such impunity, violations and political brigandage are not part of the
tenets of democracy and Nigerians, who have become disillusioned, have
continued to express their disenchantment for such bloodstained
political process.
Moreover, the silence of the police hierarchy to the use of police
helicopter to attack voters in Kogi state as well as the failure to
parade those said to have been arrested for the burning of a PDP Woman
Leader, Mrs. Salome Abuh, only point to nothing but suspicions of
conspiracy at very high places.
APC’s ultimate design is to use violence, intimidation, attacks,
blackmail and threats against the PDP to frighten Nigerians and scare
them from participating in electoral processes, then upset our
democratic order and perpetuate a one-party despotic regime in our
nation. This is the reason the APC is averse to our pro-people call for
electoral reforms in our country.
However, the APC must know that such plots against the people cannot
stand, as Nigerians have seen the directions and will never accept a
one-party system with its attendant despotic proclivities.
The APC should therefore perish the dream of imposing a one-party state
as well as its distortions that the PDP will not participate in the Edo
and Ondo governorship elections.
Such ignoble script cannot succeed, as the PDP remains the corner stone
of Nigerians’ participation in the democratic order; hence our unshaken
resolve to stand with the people on the insistence for electoral reforms
in our country.
Signed:
Kola Ologbondiyan
National Publicity Secretary
