Osun election: APC Campaign Council slams PDP for grandstanding

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, Sen. Ademola Adeleke, 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.

The statement was made available to newsmen in Abuja by Mr Segun Adeyemi, the Special Adviser to the minister.

Mohammed said the PDP’s action 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 poll.

He said that rather than resort to threats, the PDP could either go to court or decide not to participate in the supplementary election of Thursday.

“What the PDP cannot and must not do is to engage in its trademark 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,” he said.

Mohammed added that “the party failed to understand 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 minister described as “selective amnesia the jaundiced analysis by compromised, pay-as-you-go analysts, party hacks and renowned professional riggers masquerading as democrats.’’

He said they pretended 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?” he queried.

Mohammed commended the people of Osun for deepening the nation’s democracy by eschewing violence and exercising their franchise in an orderly manner all through the election process on Saturday.

He urged voters in the areas to be covered by the supplementary election to also ensure a peaceful process on Thursday.