The All Progressives Congress (APC) campaign council have given their own reaction to the postponement of the elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Festus Keyamo, the spokesperson of the APC campaign council aired his displeasure about the postponement.
Read
the statement released, “We have just received with great
disappointment and disillusionment the announcement by the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC) of its decision to postpone the
Presidential/National Assembly and Gubernatorial/House of Assembly
Elections to Saturday, February 23, 2019 and Saturday, March 9, 2019,
respectively.
We condemn and deprecate this tardiness of the
electoral umpire in the strongest terms possible. President Muhammadu
Buhari had since cooperated fully with INEC by ensuring EVERYTHING it
demanded to conduct free and fair elections were promptly made available
to it. This news is therefore a huge disappointment to us and to our
teeming supporters nationwide and around the world, many of whom have
come into the country to exercise their franchise.
We do hope
that INEC will remain neutral and impartial in this process as the rumor
mill is agog with the suggestion that this postponement has been
orchestrated in collusion with the main opposition, the PDP, that was
NEVER ready for this election. We note that all the major credible
demographic projections have predicted a defeat of the PDP and it
seriously needed this breather to orchestrate more devious strategies to
try and halt President Buhari’s momentum. It did the same as the ruling
Party in 2015, when it realized the game was up, by orchestrating the
postponement of the 2015 elections by six weeks. Now, it may be up to
its old trick again.
We have earlier raised the alarm that the
PDP is bent on discrediting this process the moment it realized it
cannot make up the numbers to win this election. We are only urging INEC
not collude with the PDP on this. We are truly worried because as early
as Friday morning, some known PDP Social Media influencers unwittingly
announced this postponement, but quickly deleted the message and
apologized to the public that it was fake news. We do not want to be
forced to a situation of announcing our total loss of confidence in
INEC, because we know where that would leave our democracy.
It is
in the light of the above that we wish to appeal to Nigerians and our
supporters to be patient, calm and resolute despite this temporary
setback. Let us not give anyone, especially the PDP, the opportunity to
plunge this nation into a crises, which is what they earnestly desire.
Its imminent defeat is just a few days away.
Lastly, we wish to
draw the attention of INEC and the world to observe that the PDP has
clearly and openly said it plans to announce parallel results through
some funny device it has procured or developed. We wish to re-iterate
that it is ONLY INEC that is legally and constitutionally empowered to
declare results and it constitutes an offence for anyone to do so. We
urge INEC to SPEAK UP NOW and warn the PDP to desist from this ignoble
act that is capable of plunging the nation into a crises of immeasurable
proportions.”
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