The major opposition party in Nigeria, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has released statements to raise alarms on illegalities carried out by President Muhammadu Buhari, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the country’s electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
DailyTrust reports that the National Spokesman of the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, made two separate statements available to news on Monday.
In one of the statements, the party claimed INEC were currently involved with a nationwide replacement of their servers in a desperate attempt to destroy the original results of the presidential elections.
According to Ologbondiyan, despite the dire attempt by both parties, they have failed to realise that computer softwares and applications leave digital footprints which will be revealed after a thorough forensic investigation.
In the second statement, Ologbondiyan said the decision by President Buhari not to transmit power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo before his “private trip” to the United Kingdom was a direct constitutional breach of the 1999 constitution by both the president and the ruling APC.
He said the direct contravention of the constitution shows that President Buhari had no respect for Nigerians and urged their supporters to condemn the act as they wait for Atiku Abubakar’s eventual victory at the Elections Petition Tribunal.
The first statement about INEC reads:
“This is completely reprehensible, and further exposes the culpability of INEC in the manipulation and rigging of the 2019 Presidential election. The PDP has been well briefed on how the INEC Leadership and Officials of the Buhari Presidency, became jittery and resorted to the desperate measure, after they realised that the servers have information of Atiku Abubakar’s victory at the election.
“Our party also has details of how the INEC Leadership and the Presidency Agents, procured and detailed computer Experts to the Commission’s Offices, to switch the servers, mutilate vital information in the system, and attempt to erase all trails of transmitted results to the main server. Moreover, our party has been informed about how the INEC Leadership, several weeks after the election, used some compromised Officials of the Commission, to manipulate voter registers in some States, by ticking names of individuals who did not participate in the Presidential election, as having voted.
“This is with the view to using such to cover the fictitious results it wrote for the APC. What INEC and the Buhari Presidency do not understand, is that computer software and applications leave traces, signatures, as well as footmark. Forensic investigation of the system will reveal the real votes transmitted from the polling centers, which show Atiku Abubakar as the winner of the election.”
Here is the full statement about President Buhari:
“The Peoples Democratic Party, says President Muhammadu Buhari’s private voyage out of the country without transmitting power, as required by the Constitution, is an act of dereliction, which confirms that the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Buhari Presidency, are not interested in governance, but seek to vacate our constitutional order, and foist an authoritarian system on our country.
“Such dereliction of office can only come from Leaders, who do not have respect for the people they govern, but always muscling their way to power through intimidation, harassment, as well as official manipulations, as witnessed in the rigging of the February 23, Presidential election by the APC. Moreover, Mr. President’s abandoning of governance, particularly at this critical time when our nation is facing grave security and economic challenges, signposts the level of impunity and recklessness that will characterize our nation in the next four years, if the stolen Presidential mandate is not retrieved from the APC.
“What else, beside an authoritarian propensity, can explain why the Buhari Presidency relegated our Constitutional Order, by declaring the application of section 145 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which directs that the President transmits power whenever he is travelling out of the country on vacation, as a mere “convention”.
“Authoritarian tendencies are usually characterised by absolute lack of trust on other government functionaries, which could likely explain the failure to transmit power to the Vice President. Such proclivity can also lead to a sequestering of institutions of government, if not checked.
“The import of this relegation of section 145, is also a clear absence of a constitutional command structure, which leaves our nation at the mercy of the extremely corrupt, vicious, and anti-people cabal, with whom President Buhari presided over the most corrupt and most incompetent administration, which wrecked our economy, divided our nation, and opened her up for escalated insecurity. Such dereliction at the high levels emboldens bandits, bolsters insurgents, and fuels cruel acts, such as extra-judicial killing, illegal arrests, detention of innocent citizens, constitutional violations, attack on institutions of democracy, as well as reckless looting of our national treasury by members of the cabal, because they know that “nothing will happen”.
“The PDP therefore, urges Nigerians to unite in condemning this act of impunity in the interest of our nation, even as they earnestly await the retrieval of the stolen Presidential mandate at the Tribunal.
“Our nation, is in dire need of a legitimate, people-oriented, responsible and responsive government, that will foster respect for rule of law, as well as due regard to other arms and institutions of government, particularly the Judiciary and the Legislature, in ensuring the general wellbeing and security of all Nigerians.”
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