Poll’s Conduct
Steve Gerard
The APC Campaign Council for the 2018 Osun Governorship Election has
described as excessive grandstanding the call by the PDP for INEC to
declare its candidate in the polls as the winner.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Monday, the Chairman of the
Council’s Media Committee, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, decried the PDP’s
descent into hysteria after INEC announced that the election was
inconclusive, saying this reinforced the Council’s earlier statement
that the opposition party was in the panic mode prior to the election,
and that it had no confidence in the institutions saddled with
organizing the polls.
The Council said rather than resort to threats, the PDP could either
go to court or decide not to participate in the supplementary election
of Sept. 27th.
What the PDP cannot and must not do, the Council said, is to engage in
its trade-mark brigandage or to employ tactics that can short-circuit
the democratic process.
”In its time, there would have been no room for a supplementary
election in Osun because the PDP would have used state institutions to
hijack the election proper, as it did in Ekiti in 2014. But in its
deafening hysteria, the PDP pretends not to understand the real
meaning of the outcome of the Osun election: That the ruling APC did
nothing to prevent the state institutions that organized the election
from carrying out their duties, in the spirit of true democracy.
”Local and foreign observers have hailed INEC and the security
agencies for a well-organized election. We join them in this
commendation. Our confidence in the ability of the relevant state
institutions involved in the Osun election remains unshaken. So also
is our belief that every disagreement resulting from the election must
be resolved through the democratic process, rather than a resort to
threats of fire and brimstone,” the Council said.
It described as selective amnesia the jaundiced analysis by
compromised, pay-as-you-go analysts, party hacks and renowned professional
riggers masquerading as democrats who pretend not to remember that the
APC was leading the PDP massively (by over 40,000 votes) in the 2015
Kogi governorship election when INEC declared the election
inconclusive.
”Rather then resort to threats, like the PDP is doing now, the APC
simply submitted to the democratic process and the supplementary
election was peacefully conducted in 91 polling units across 18 of the
21 local governments in the state. Where were these emergency,
ready-for-hire analysts then?” the Council queried.
It commended the good people of Osun State for deepening the nation’s
democracy by eschewing violence and exercising their franchise in
orderly manner all through the election process last Saturday, and
urged voters in the areas to be covered by the supplementary election
to also ensure a peaceful process on Thursday.