Cross River REC, Briyia, has proved to be APC stalwart, says PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that Cross River State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mr. Frankland Briyia, has proved himself as a stalwart of the All Progressives Congress (APC) with his emergence as the party’s governorship aspirant in Bayelsa State.

It described Briyia’s aspiration while still in office as REC as a direct confirmation that APC used its members to write figures for President Muhammadu Buhari in the February 23 presidential election.

PDP, in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiya, noted, “Mr. Briyia’s governorship ambition on the platform of the APC, which he announced while still in the confines of his office as REC, amply exposed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as a partisan electoral umpire under the watch of Professor Mahmood Yakubu.”

It stated that Buhari’s failure to sanction Briyia, even after he brazenly announced his ambition right in INEC’s facility, betrayed APC’s embedded interests in the commission.

“Our party, therefore, calls on President Buhari to come out clean on the real reason he failed to sanction the Cross River REC in line with the law,” Ologbondiya stated.

Meanwhile, if feelers from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the South East are anything to go by, then proponents of zoning in Anambra State may have to wait a little longer.

The party has resolved to go for the best candidate to fly its flag in the 2020 gubernatorial ballot, irrespective of the person’s zone.

Its national vice chairman (South East), Chief Austin Umahi, told reporters after its zonal working committee meeting in Enugu at the weekend that the party was interested in the best, and not zoning, to restore the state to PDP.

“We are going for the best candidate irrespective of where he comes from. If he likes, let him come from the zone that produced the incumbent governor. The most important thing is that we want to recapture Anambra. The state is very cardinal to South East and there is no way South East governors will meet as PDP and Anambra will be lacking. So it lies on us to ensure that we get Anambra on stream for the PDP, which is part of progress,” Umahi said.

He added that PDP governors in the zone had done well and that the zonal leadership had always taken it upon itself to move round from time to time to inspect projects by its governors.