Address challenges of electoral violence, killings, PDP tells Buhari

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Saturday charged President Muhammadu Buhari to address the challenges of electoral violence, killings and alteration of election results rather dissipating energy to dismiss the alleged third term plot.

The party made the call in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan.

The PDP said that if President Buhari seeks to uphold the constitution, he should have used the APC National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting to directly and strongly condemn his party’s resort to violence, killing, forceful invasion of polling units and alteration of results to seize power in the November 16 governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa States as well as the Kogi West Senatorial election.

“President Buhari by now ought to have summoned his service chiefs and ordered a presidential investigation into the violence and observed infractions in the elections, including the deployment of a police helicopter to teargas voters.

“It is also unfortunate that instead of taking concrete and decisive steps to bring the perpetrators of the heinous crimes in Kogi and Bayelsa to book and give assurances of electoral reforms, Mr. President is rather seeking to make a discourse of an unattainable third term.

“Our party notes that from President Buhari’s speech, it is clear that he is more interested in the survival of the APC than the survival of democracy, which his party is doing all to truncate since the impunity that was introduced by the APC to manipulate the greater part of the 2019 presidential elections.

“Such is a bitter truth of the inevitable mortality of a devious platform upon which Nigerians experienced the worst form of suppression, deprivation and cruelty ever in the history of our nation. Indeed, there is no hope for APC.

“The APC is a party that has brought so much division, bloodletting and hardship to Nigeria, so much that compatriots resorted to suicide and slavery mission abroad as options. Such platform can only thrive for a while.

“It is therefore advisable for Mr. President to abandon the true and unambiguous picture of the fate of his dying party and concentrate on ways to address the problems brought by his administration on Nigerians.

“Instead of attempting to spur a public discourse out of unattainable third term or seeking to mend an already derelict APC, Mr. President should know that Nigerians’ expectation of him, in this second and, of course, last term, is the restoration of rule of law and a legacy of electoral reforms that will guarantee free, fair and credible election in Nigeria.”