The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said the conduct and outcome of the governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi state have destroyed the hope Nigerians have in democratic practice.
Reacting to electoral outcome in in both states in a statement signed by the National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party accused the government trampling on democracy “with utmost impunity that can only be obtainable in Hitler’s Germany and Samuel Doe’s Liberia, where the lives and rights of citizens meant nothing to suppressive power mongers.”
The PDP also accused security forces of aiding armed hoodlums to invade polling centres, to shoot and kill innocent citizens, cart away ballot boxes, stuff them with already thumb-printed ballot papers in favour of APC.
“It is distressing that under the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC administration, votes no longer count; power and governance no longer derive from the people but from violence, manipulations and the barrel of the gun,” it stated.
On the elections in Kogi State, the PDP, in another statement, cautioned INEC over the “fictitious” votes being bandied from Okene and other areas to favour the APC.
The party demanded the immediate cancellation of such allocated results, particularly in Okene Local Government Area.
The party said nobody would accept the provocative alteration of results from polling units as well as allocation of fictitious votes, particularly the awarding of 112, 000 votes to APC in Okene.
The Bayelsa State Chairman of the PDP, Moses Cleopas, accused the Army’s GOC of using the men under his command, “especially the Commander of the Artillery Brigade, to perpetrate electoral fraud in Bayelsa.”
He accused them of spearheading an alleged rewriting of the result of the election to rig it in favour of the APC.
According to him, “the soldiers arrested PDP leaders in Ogbia, including the council Chairman, Hon. Ebinyon Turner, and two lawmakers, Hon. Gibson Munalayefa and Mrs. Naomi Ogoli.”
