By Kola Ologbondiyan, National Publicity Secretary, PDP.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) notes the uneasiness, apprehension and nervousness in the drowning Buhari Presidency and the fading All Progressives Congress (APC) since the emergence of Atiku Abubakar as Presidential candidate of the PDP.
The PDP said such nervousness in the deflated party has led to a renewed attempt at smear campaign with spurious allegations against our Presidential candidate; a defeatist approach that shows that the APC and the Buhari Presidency are afraid of the Atiku candidacy and have reached their wits end, well ahead of the elections.
The claims, by APC, of vote-buying at our national convention, is therefore, not only false but completely unfounded and symptomatic of a party that has totally lost bearing and now engaged in rumour mongering.
However, for us as a party, such allegation from the APC is not unexpected given that it had tried everything possible to scuttle our national convention and Presidential primary but woefully failed, hence the desperation to engage in attempt to discredit the process that has been acclaimed as the beat in our political history.
Unlike the APC that has an unpopular Presidential candidate, who has failed in governance, foisted on it without an election, the whole world watched with excitement as 12 aspirants contested the PDP Presidential primary, where delegates drawn from respected Nigerians across the country, freely voted for a candidate of their choice.
To the amusement of Nigerians, the APC conducted a non-contested convention in which it declared President Buhari as “winner” with over 14 million fictitious votes.
In their desperation, they forgot that “Winning” as a word connotes contest.
Strangely, the APC declared a candidate as having won when there was never a contest – a charade by a deceptive party with duplicitous leaders!
While we note that the APC is suffering from a pre-defeat trauma, we caution this fading party and its presidential candidate, who had failed our nation, to steer clear of our party and get ready for issue based campaign ahead of the 2019 election.
It is instructive to state that their attempt at smear campaign against our candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, will fail as Nigerians are interested only in the candidate that can make a turn around of the ugly situation Buhari Presidency has sunk us.
Meanwhile, the party has cautioned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) not to ever contemplate bending the rules to smuggle in candidates from the Zamfara state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Whereas legally, all congresses and related processes for election of candidates for various offices for the 2019 general elections ended yesterday (Sunday, October 7, 2018), the Zamfara state chapter of the APC has not conducted any congress, and by the provision of the law, it has no candidates in all the elections.
The PDP is aware of a clandestine meeting today between topmost officials of INEC and Zamfara state government, where INEC was instructed to manipulate the system and bend the rules to accommodate the APC.
The PDP cautions the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, over this attempt to manipulate the processes and use underhand measures to liberate the APC from the cul de sac it plunged itself into in Zamfara state.
We insist that the laws guiding our elections must be upheld, as the PDP will never accept anything short of that.
Finally, the PDP wants the APC and INEC to know that our party is at alert regarding all electoral processes, in line with our avowed determination to dismantle APC’s rigging machinery in the 2019 general elections.