The opposition People’s Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Organization (PPCO) said the Independent National Electoral Commission’s quick response to its allegations of plotting with President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress(APC) to rig the forthcoming general elections is “suspicious”
“The haste by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to haul insults at the PDP and defend the All Progressives Congress (APC) over the alleged pressure on it to drop the display of results at polling centre, evinces that INEC is being compromised ahead of the polls,” PPD’s spokesman Kola Ologbondiyan said in a statement on Thursday.
“In resorting to insults and engaging in a campaign of calumny instead of words of assurances to stakeholders, INEC has made a dive into the arena and accentuated anxieties by Nigerians as well as the international community that it is being compromised by the APC and the Buhari Presidency,” he added.
PDP had earlier advised INEC to distance itself from an alleged plot to compromise the Electoral Guidelines and pave the way for the alteration of the forthcoming general elections results.
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But the commission while responding to the opposition party’s challenged it to provide evidence that it was plotting with Buhari and the ruling party to rig the elections.
The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mahood Yakubu, Rotimi Oyekanmi, disclaimed PDP’s allegations.
“PDP should cure itself of this recurring hallucination which I am sure Nigerians no longer buy,” Oyekanmi said. “Certainly, INEC is not into the rigging business.”
Ologbondiyan, however, stated the party “shall continue to hold the Prof Yakubu-led INEC to its responsibility to deliver a transparent, free, fair and credible 2019 general election.”
“It is also instructive for INEC to know that nothing will deter us from monitoring all the processes leading to this year’s general elections and hold the commission accountable on every perceived infraction,” he added
He affirmed that “on no account must INEC drop the display of results at the polling units and the electronic transmission of results to its server from its guidelines as being pressured by the APC and Buhari Presidency.”
“PDP Presidential Campaign also rejects any plan to use former National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) members as polls officials as this will amount to handing over the electoral process directly to the APC and the Buhari Presidency,” Ologbondiyan said.
