Allow INEC To Work Independently, PDP Slams Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari has been attacked by the Peoples Democratic Party over his recent statement on the electoral process conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission during the 2019 general election.

The opposition party claimed that the statement of the President is a pointer that the 2019 general elections were not credible.

PDP called on the President to reintroduce the 8th National Assembly’s Electoral Act Amendment bill if he committed to ensuring the free, fair and credible electoral process.

The party in a statement through its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, charged the President to provide an electoral atmosphere like the one that brought him into office in 2015.

PDP stated that President Buhari’s demand that INEC and the Police should ensure that the will of the people prevail in free, fair and credible elections is a sign that election results have been fraudulent since the Buhari administration came into office.

Ologbondiyan said, “This is including the recent elections in Bayelsa and Kogi where the All Progressives Congress, APC, turned the respective states to theatres of war, yet Mr. President congratulated the ‘winners’ of those charades.”

“In his own words, in a meeting with INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, and the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, at the Presidential Villa, Mr. President said, “our elections must be done in a violent-free atmosphere. The process must be free, fair, decent and devoid of intimidations and malpractices. It is the duty of the police to accomplish that and this is what I expect in the elections immediately ahead and going forward”.

President Buhari had stated that candidates that are declared as the winner of the elections should be the will of the people.

PDP noted that this is a sign that the electoral process under President Buhari’s administration is a fraud.

It said that even though the verdict of the Supreme Court on the Presidential Election stands, in total obedience to our laws, “the fact remains that the violent manipulations of the 2019 general elections in favour of the APC and its candidates will continue to stare the nation in the face.”

The statement added, “Mr. President’s remark shows that, in their innermost conscience, beneficiaries of manipulated polls are always confronted with the truth.”

“Furthermore, the PDP tasks the management of INEC and the Police to come clean of the details of their recent meeting with President Buhari which is coming ahead of about 28 impending runoffs and by-elections scheduled for this month.”

“Our party holds that INEC is an independent electoral commission whose activities and processes are clearly governed by the law and extant rules and not by the dictates or prescriptions of the President.”

Ologbondiyan called on the President to allow the commission work independently and should stop dishing out instructions to them from the Presidential villa.

“Mr. President should, therefore, steer clear of INEC while the commission must assert its independence and desist from going to the Presidential villa for instructions on elections. Nigerians have their doubts if the hugely compromised INEC under Professor Yakubu can be anything independent.”

“He should order the prosecution of security agents involved in the invasion of polling centres and shoot at voters in recent elections.”

“After that, Mr. President should focus on seeking for solutions to the worsening economic and security challenges that have befallen our nation under his incompetent administration.”