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APC Campaign Council Attacks PDP for Grandstanding on Osun Poll

The war of words between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over the Osun State governorship election continued yesterday. The APC Campaign Council described as “excessive grandstanding” the call by the PDP for the declaration of its candidate as the winner.

In a statement issued in Lagos, the Chairman of the Council’s Media Committee, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, decried what he called the PDP’s descent into hysteria after INEC announced that the election was inconclusive. He said 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 organising the polls.

The council said rather than resort to threats, the PDP could either go to court or decide not to participate in Thursday’s supplementary election.

What the PDP cannot and must not do, the Council said, is to engage in brigandage or to employ tactics that can short-circuit the democratic process.

INEC declared the election inconclusive because the number of cancelled votes exceeded the difference between the two top candidates. Ademola Adeleke of the PDP is leading, having scored 254,698 votes.

APC’s Gboyega Oyetola got 254,345 votes. There will be a rerun in seven polling units.

The APC said: “‘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 organised 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-organised 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 than 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 praised Osun State residents for deepening democracy by eschewing violence and exercising their franchise in an orderly manner last Saturday, and urged voters in the areas to be covered by the supplementary election to also ensure a peaceful process on Thursday.

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Copyright 2018 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant sources.

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