The All Progressives Congress Campaign Council for the 2018 Osun governorship election has described as excessive grandstanding the call by the Peoples Democratic Party for the Independent National Electoral Commission to declare its candidate in the polls as the winner.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Monday, the Chairman of the Council’s Media Committee, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, decried the PDP’s alleged descent into hysteria after INEC announced that the election was
inconclusive.
He said it reinforced the Council’s earlier statement that the opposition party was in the panic mode prior to the election and that it had no confidence in the institutions saddled with organising the polls.
The candidate of the PDP in the September 22 election, Senator Ademola Adeleke, came first while that of the APC, Gboyega Oyetola came second.
The PDP had said that its candidate met the constitutional requirement to be declared the winner of the election.
Mohammed, however, said rather than resort to threats, the PDP could either go to court or decide not to participate in the supplementary election on Thursday.
What the PDP cannot and must not do, Mohammed said, was to engage in its alleged trade-mark brigandage or to employ tactics that he said can short-circuit the democratic process.
He said, ”In its time, there would have been no room for a supplementary election in Osun because the PDP would have used state institutions to hijack the election proper, as it did in Ekiti in 2014.
“But in its deafening hysteria, the PDP pretends not to understand the real meaning of the outcome of the Osun election: That the ruling APC did nothing to prevent the state institutions that organised the election from carrying out their duties, in the spirit of true democracy.
”Local and foreign observers have hailed INEC and the security agencies for a well-organised election. We join them in this commendation.
“Our confidence in the ability of the relevant state institutions involved in the Osun election remains unshaken. So also is our belief that every disagreement resulting from the election must be resolved through the democratic process, rather than a resort to threats of fire and brimstone.”
He described as selective amnesia the alleged jaundiced analysis by those he described as compromised, pay-as-you-go analysts, party hacks and renowned professional riggers masquerading as Democrats who he said pretended not to remember that the APC was leading the PDP massively (by over 40,000 votes) in the 2015 Kogi governorship election when INEC declared the election inconclusive.
According to him, ”Rather than resort to threats, like the PDP is doing now, the APC simply submitted to the democratic process and the supplementary election was peacefully conducted in 91 polling units across 18 of the 21 local governments in the state.
“Where were these emergency, ready-for-hire analysts then?”
Mohammed commended the people of Osun State for deepening the nation’s democracy by eschewing violence and exercising their franchise in an orderly manner all through the election process last Saturday.
THE PUNCH
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