The Peoples Democratic Party has said that it does not believe that President Muhammadu Buhari will deliver on his promise of ensuring free and fair elections.
He stated that recent developments had emboldened its belief that there would not be free, fair and transparent election.
The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in an interview with newsmen, stated that the plan to re-introduce the use of incident form and the deployment of Buhari’s ‘relation’, Mrs Amina Zakari, as the Chairman of the National Collation Centre Committee by the Independent National Electoral Commission during the February presidential election indicated that there would be no free and fair election.
He said the PDP was not comfortable with any possible plan to extend the tenure of the current Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris.
He alleged that Idris had shown partisanship and therefore would not be impartial in his duties.
He said, “Is he (Buhari) promising free and fair election by asking the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood, to move his blood relation, Amina Zakari, as the head of the collation centre of the presidential election? Is that how to deliver free and fair election? The PDP and our presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, do not believe that President Muhammadu Buhari will deliver free and fair election.
“As far as we are concerned, the use of incident form or the new adoption of the incident form has shown clearly that there is no plan for free and fair elections. It is this incident form that was used by INEC that caused the rigging of elections in 2015 particularly in a state like Kano. It is the same approach that the current INEC chairman is adopting. Totally, we do not believe that there is a desire or plan to conduct an election that will be free and fair.”
He added, “In terms of security across the nation, we believe that the security situation is not the same across the nation. There are areas where we have security challenges and there are areas where there are no security challenges. But what we object to and what gives us concern is the fact that the IGP has demonstrated partisanship in many states of the federation and we have the fear that if he remains the IGP that will conduct the election, he is certainly going to be biased against the non-APC candidates. As such, we believe that since he has attained the service year of retirement, the President, if he is sincere to Nigerians and want to conduct a free, fair and credible election, should allow him to retire.”
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