National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Uche Secondus, has charged security agents deployed for election duties, particularly soldiers to be professional in the way they handle issues.
While tagging last Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly polls as a body bag election, Secondus said the security agents are not at war with any section of the citizenry and as such ‘’must try to be professional in their duties by staying away from election matters as directed by the Supreme Court of the land’’.
According to him, when All Progressives Congress (APC) leaders were threatening foreign election monitors with returning to their country on body bags ‘’we didn’t know that they had designed the same thing for Nigerians. As at the last count over 50 Nigerians have lost their lives, most of them from the South South region where a division of the army with their commander were turned on the people on the Election Day.
‘’For a regime that appears comfortable with blood, the deaths they recorded during their campaigns were not enough as after their contrived ballot box victory and stolen mandate, they still hired some hoodlums and sent them to the streets to go and kill themselves and further inconvenience the grieving Nigerians while celebrating their electoral robbery.’’
The PDP chief who was speaking at a press briefing in Abuja said the country has been in a sorrow mood for ‘’our democracy that was dragged down last Saturday, four years after the World stood up for Nigeria for not only conducting a flawless election but for going ahead in addition to have a seamless transition to an opposition party, but we all are seeing the direct beneficiary of that rare democratic disposition, General Muhammadu Buhari using the military to rob Nigerians of their right to choose leaders of their choice.’’
Continuing, he said, ‘’the clear effect of militarising the election particularly in the South South and South East in addition to the killing of innocent electorates was the obvious suppression of voters who were either scared out or chased away. Even by INEC own record voter turnout in last Saturday’s election fell to about 36% from 44% it was in 2015.
‘’The military were dragged into the election to suppress and scare away voters and facilitate rigging. That is how you hear ridiculously that war torn Borno and Yobe states recorded higher percentage in voter torn out than some states in the South South geo- political zone. Shamelessly, they have again started mobilising to use the same military to forcefully take over for APC two PDP states in the South South and one state in the South East.
‘’Credible intelligence available to the party showed that the ruling party’s main link in INEC met with party’s leadership as well as the military to review the planned strategy to take over these states. Kano, Borno, Yobe and Zamfra fraud. While the military was suppressing voters in PDP strong hold areas in the South, a different abracadabra was going on in some northern states particularly in Kano, Yobe, Borno and Zamfara states where numbers refuse to add up. In Borno, Yobe and Zamfara states confirmed report shows that there was non compliance in the use of Smart card reader as approved by INEC rules.
‘’In these states as in others, the data is inconsistent with the accreditation of registered voters in the local government areas and voting patterns witnessed in 2015. The same applies to cancelled votes, in Nasarawa states over 115,000 votes cancelled, Kogi 79,000 votes, Plateau 30,000 votes indicating that these high incidence of vote cancellation were designed to suppress the margin of victory in PDP strong holds.
‘’As part of their strategy to ensure that PDP is distracted from pursuing its stolen mandate, General Buhari’s regime has decided to intensify their intimidation and strangulation of the opposition. Some prominent members of the opposition have been put on surveillance and their names listed to be stopped from traveling out of the country.’’
