Resist Pressure by APC, Presidency to Rig Elections, PDP Cautions INEC Boss

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has advised the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, to resist any pressure from the presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC), and also, he rise above any form of compromise and conduct a free, fair and transparent elections next month.

At a press conference on  Monday in Abuja,  PDP Director of Media and Publicity, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, said Nigeria is worried, and  that there was palpable fear in every Nigerian today on whether the INEC boss can conduct an election, which will indeed be free, fair, credible and transparent.

According to him, “The PDP has reviewed all the circumstances surrounding the activities of the INEC as presently constituted, and after a careful appraisal of comments by critical national and international stakeholders, we challenge INEC Chairman, Yakubu, to rise above the manifest compromises and conduct the 2019 general elections in a transparent manner."

The main opposition party said it already has information that “the geo-spatial centres created by the INEC Chairman in the six geo-political zones have also been dubiously duplicated by Mrs. Amina Zakari in all the zones from where APC and Buhari Presidency intend to assemble fictitious votes and transmit same to INEC’s database and situation room.”

Ologbondiyan alleged that Yakubu was being compromised by the APC and the presidency to rig the next month elections.

He added that this scenario was also feared to be the reason INEC was succumbing to pressure by the presidency to retain Mrs. Amina Zakari, a a relation of the president, as head of the collation centre, where she was being positioned to allegedly alter genuine results and allocate fictitious figures in favour of Buhari.

“We are also aware that the process of employing ad-hoc staff that will function as electoral officers, particularly in the presidential election has already been compromised to favour the APC under Mahmood Yakubu’s watch to manipulate the process,” he said.

He stated that presently, more than half of the card readers to be used in the elections have been rendered obsolete and non-functional, less than 30 days to the elections, noting that card readers have not been upgraded.

“We have it on good authority that these will be used to create confusion on election days and facilitate the use of incident form, which will hamper transparency,” Ologbondiyan added.

The PDP, therefore, called on INEC chairman  to demonstrate his credibility and ability to conduct free, fair and transparent elections by taking urgent and decisive steps to show that he has not been compromised by the APC and the presidency. 

To do this end, the party called on the electoral body  to immediately rejig the electoral guidelines in a way that accreditation must be first concluded, number of accredited voters ascertained and openly announced before actual voting.

It stressed that anything short of this would only validate the position of Nigerians that INEC has been compromised by the APC.

The party insisted that Yakubu cannot claim to be committed to a credible election with the continued stay of  Zakari as head of the collation centre, in spite of manifest conflict of interest, saying that the chairman should without further delay remove Zakari from this sensitive position, if he indeed intends to conduct a credible collation of presidential results.