Electoral Bill: PDP Blames APC Of Plotting Tenure Elongation – Nexus News
The main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has damned the continued refusal of President Muhammadu Buhari to approve the Electoral Act Amendment Bill passed by the National Assembly, stating that it is a scheme by the APC to keep themselves in power.
Speaking at a world press conference in Abuja, the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Hon. Debo Ologunagba, stated that Buhari’s refusal could result to violence and humanitarian crisis capable of affecting the West African sub-region.
He said PDP is disturbed that less than a year to the 2023 general elections, President Buhari and the APC administration “are heightening apprehensions across the country and orchestrating a constitutional impasse that could railroad our democracy into an emergency tenure elongation.”
The spokesman blamed the administration of plotting to shift the election date or “worst still an interim government situation.”
He noted that there was increasing tension with the capacity to spawn “widespread restiveness with consequential violence, bloodletting and attendant humanitarian crisis in the country that may affect the entire West African sub-region, Europe, America and other parts of the world if not resolved.
“This is because Nigerians, especially the youths have become more politically aware and involved, with a well-founded and implacable aversion to injustice, oppression, manipulations and undemocratic tendencies as being witnessed under the APC administration. Evidence of this mood became manifest in the EndSARS protest of October 2020.”
Ologunagba also disclosed that they were in possession of information about how some selfish “unelected cabinet ministers, advisers and other top government functionaries with ambitions for presidential, governorship and other elective positions are mounting pressure on President Buhari not to sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill to enable them to remain longer in office to continue to use public funds to corruptly pursue their political interests.
“President Buhari who claims to be fighting corruption is condoning and encouraging this inordinate access to public funds in pursuit of private ambitions.
“The only way Mr. President can extricate himself is to sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill immediately,” PDP said.
He urged President Buhari and APC leaders to desist from toying with the aspiration of Nigerians to entrench democracy through the process of free, fair, transparent and credible elections in 2023.”
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According to the opposition party, given the unstable political situation in the country today, they are requesting Nigerians, organized labor, civil society, student bodies, trade unions to impress on the president to sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill to prevent an impending crisis in the country.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should also “stand on the side of democracy, to get prepared to use technology that abounds to ensure the direct transmission of election results from the polling units in the 2023 elections.”
Meanwhile, a former Senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki, has requested that President Muhammadu Buhari gives assent to the bill as a legacy for the foundation of democracy in the country.
Speaking with journalists shortly after attending the meeting of the zonal and state women leaders of the PDP at the national headquarters of the party in Abuja, Saraki appealed to the president to approve the bill as the strength of any good governance is its electoral process.
John James Akpanudoedehe, the secretary of the APC, neither answered his call nor responded to a text message sent to his phone.
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