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.