by Ranti Joseph
The Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Organisation (PDPPCO) on Friday has alleged that the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) was planning to soil the characters of its leaders ahead of the March 28 and April 11 general elections.
The Director of Media and Publicity of the campaign organisation, Femi Fani-Kayode, made the allegation while addressing newsmen in Abuja.
He said his party was in possession of credible information about the alleged APC’s plan to procure the services of some disgruntled persons within and outside the country to carry out the attacks. “They have offered huge sums of money to the former staff of numerous PDP leaders, including the President, the Vice President, the National Chairman, the DG of the Presidential Campaign Organisation, the Chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees, the National Security Adviser, two Directors of the Presidential Campaign Organisation, including my good self, and numerous other key government and party leaders and functionaries to fabricate the most unbelievable, salacious, chilling and macabre tales about their former principals in an attempt to discredit us,” he said.
While condemning the planned Lagosians March for Change, being organised by the Buhari/Osinbajo Campaign Organisation on Saturday, he argued that if there should be any rally or protest in Lagos, such should be directed against some national leaders of the party.
Meanwhile, a group, operating under the auspices of the PDP Integrity Vanguard, has expressed fears that the database of the Independent National Electoral Commission would have been compromised by some unscrupulous persons, and therefore raised anxiety over the outcome of the results of the general elections.
Addressing newsmen in Abuja, the Leader of the Group, Aniete Okon, said recent discoveries by the PDP Integrity Vanguard appeared to provide sufficient proof that the allegations of cloning of INEC database could have been true after all.
Okon, who called for the immediate forensic examination of the INEC database, revealed how the Permanent Voter Card of Effiong, who registered in Gwarimpa, in FCT, was cloned in Akwa Ibom State.
He expressed doubt if the electoral empire was ready to conduct a transparent election, following the myriad of defects and failings apparent in the process. “The entire gamut of INEC’s logistics and the technologies it has deployed so far has generated public anxiety in recent times. This is not without reason. Nigerians have been apprehensive over the myriad of defects and failings apparent in INEC’s processes, which lend credence to and underscore INEC’s persisting unpreparedness, quite contrary to earlier claims by INEC that it was ready as of February 14, 2015 to conduct elections. INEC truly might have been ‘ready’ as a matter of fact. The question however is, what manner and quality of elections would INEC have delivered given that it has become clear that at that level of readiness, nearly 50 per cent of legitimate voters would have been disenfranchised for no fault of theirs? More worrisome are the various discoveries that our group has made in the last week. Those discoveries appear to reinforce our earlier position in which we established a nexus between these apparent imperfections and the clamour by the All Progressives Congress for elections to go on, however, unprepared INEC was at the time,” he said.
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