APC: Fair elections ‘cannot hold under Jonathan’s watch’

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of planning to rig the August 9 gubernatorial election in Osun state at source.

The party also accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of frustrating attempts of its members to obtain permanent voter cards, adding that the PDP has been boasting that it would again use the military to illegally shut down the state and bully the opposition in Osun just as it did in Ekiti.

APC further accused President Goodluck Jonathan of paying a lip service to the organisation of free and fair elections, insisting that all the assurances given by the president had not translated into credible elections.

In a statement issued on Monday by its spokesman, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party urged the president to take concrete actions to prevent elections in the country from being marred by intimidation and harassment of opposition party members and supporters, as well as the deliberate disenfranchisement of voters, which “hallmarked” the Anambra and Ekiti gubernatorial elections.

”On the same day the president’s latest assurances of a free, fair, credible and transparent elections in 2015 were being reported, agents of the Jonathan-led federal government were ransacking the offices of a company hired to carry out an opinion poll for Osun state ahead of the August 9 gubernatorial election,” the party said.

“If the opposition can no longer freely carry out opinion polls, if the companies hired to carry out such polls are harassed and intimidated by SSS officials as they did to tnsrms, the offices of which were searched for six hours, after which top officials of the firm were dragged to the SSS offices in Shangisha and computers carted away, then how can any president convince anyone that free and fair elections can be held under his watch?

”If the Ngozi Okonjo Iweala-linked NOI polling firm has never been harassed for its choreographed opinion polls that favour the Jonathan administration, why should other firms be subjected to the kind of Gestapo- tactics that tnsrms was exposed to? This is why we are asking President Jonathan to walk to talk.”

It wondered whether INEC Chairman Attahiru Jega properly weighed the statement he made to justify the deployment of troops to Ekiti for the state’s gubernatorial election on the basis that they helped to ensure a violence-free election

”Jega should be asked to explain why it is that the troops who were sent to provide security for the Ekiti election were harassing and intimidating only the opposition? Why is it that they were arresting only opposition members? Is that also part of providing security for an election? If soldiers had only provided non-intrusive security for the election, perhaps no one would have complained. But where they turned themselves into the enforcement arm of the ruling party, everyone, including INEC, should be concerned,” it said.

The party urged the president to refrain from deploying the military for election purposes and read the riot act to his cabinet members, such as Musiliu Obanikoro and Abduljelili Adesiyna, and party officials who specialise in electoral malfeasance and elections would start becoming free, fair, credible and transparent to such an extent that the world would notice.

”Saying one thing and doing the opposite, Mr President, will not translate to credible elections. The world is watching,” the party said, before adding: “As a starting point, we urge the president, if indeed he is committed to free and fair elections, to launch an inquiry into why the offices of the firm carrying out an opinion poll for Osun state were invaded, and to tell Nigerians whether the firm would have been harassed if it had been hired by the PDP or its candidate for the August 9th election.”