· PDP is planning to disrupt and rig Saturday’s election –Nweke
· You are making excuses for your expected abysmal outing – Mbah
From Geoffrey Anyanwu, Enugu
Ahead of Saturday’s Governorship and State House of Assembly elections, the governorship candidates of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu state have engaged in accusations and counter accusations over the coming polls.
While the APGA candidate and former Minister of Information, Frank Nweke Jr. accused the PDP family in the state of planning to disrupt and rig the March 11 election, his PDP counterpart through the Campaign Council replied him by saying he was only making excuses for his expected abysmal outing on Saturday.
Nweke had while addressing a world press conference yesterday in his campaign office, Independent Layout Enugu, raised the alarm that the PDP had plans to compromise the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and use thugs to cause mayhem.
He said, “I am compelled to bring to the attention of the public the grand and devious plans of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu State to compromise INEC officials and adhoc staff to bypass the use of BVAS and generally disrupt the Governorship and House of Assembly elections in the state through the use of thugs to cause mayhem, with a view to dispersing voters at polling units in order to have opportunity to rig the elections, subvert the will of the people to achieve victory at all costs.
“Since suffering massive losses across the state on February 25, 2023, the PDP have held series of meetings at various locations to perfect their nefarious plans to ensure that they disrupt the electoral process, compromise INEC staff and deploy maximum violence.
“A source that attended the meetings reported that they lamented that they were falsely led into believing that BVAS was impregnable by INEC and that manual voting was impossible.
“According to them events in Port Harcourt and some parts of the country had demonstrated otherwise; and that they must now take advantage of it by deploying sums of money to compromise INEC staff, buy votes and cause maximum violence to scare voters who do not vote for them and intimidate others into voting for them against their will.
“They have therefore resolved to ‘buy’ INEC staff to sabotage the elections as described above, and also to specifically ensure that the original result sheets are neither brought to the polling units nor the ward and local government collation centres. Since the IReV malfunctioned last Saturday, they reasoned that they would calmly write new results when the representatives of other political parties disperse at various collation centres in the belief that results had been announced.
“The compromised INEC team is led by a staff of INEC called ‘Ifenna Onoh’ who for several years has been the liaison between the State government and in particular, the Chief of Staff, Enugu Government House and INEC officials. It would appear that the relationship has been groomed for years in preparation for this election,” he said among other revelations.
Nweke however, assured the people that the “All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, in Enugu will do all that is possible to guarantee the safety of our people, ensure that you exercise your right to vote on March 11 and see that your vote is protected. We will not take lightly any plans to subvert or abuse the democratic process.”
But swiftly reacting to Nweke, the Campaign Council of the Enugu State chapter of the PDP dismissed the allegations of planned rigging of the Saturday’s elections leveled against it describing it as as a disingenuous effort at preemptive excuses for Nweke’s expected abysmal outing in the election.
In a press release issued by its Director of Communications/Spokesperson, Nana Ogbodo, yesterday, the PDP Campaign Council said, “We would ordinarily not dignify Nweke with a response because his impact on the forthcoming general elections begins and ends with congesting and making the ballot papers longer than necessary.
“He is therefore only laying the formwork of excuses for his expected abysmal outing in the governorship poll.
“Nweke went into APGA ostensibly on the wrong permutation that PDP’s governorship ticket would go outside Nkanu land so he could harvest from the expected anger of the people. Unfortunately for him, events mocked at his foresight as that was not to be.
“We therefore advise Nweke to climb down from this high horse and first present himself for a popularity test in his hometown, Ozalla, before pursuing an illusionary governorship ambition.
“Perhaps, as a former Minister of Information, who defended perceived electoral deficits in the 2007 election and engaged in hot exchanges with the then Senate President, Ken Nnamani and the international communities on the conduct of the election in Enugu or as former Chief of Staff, who may have meddled with the electoral processes as he alluded in his press release, Nweke is still unaware that the Electoral Act 2022 has effectively put a stop to whatever ignoble roles he might have been playing in the past”.
“We also reckon that Nweke, who has been a senior stakeholder and a major beneficiary of successive PDP governments until March 2022 when he embarked on his delusional governorship voyage on the platform of APGA will ultimately return to the umbrella after his crushing defeat on March 11.”