It’ll Be Difficult For PDP To Participate In Future Elections –- Secondus

The National Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP),
Prince Uche Secondus, has said that it would be difficult for the
party to participate in future elections in the country without
electoral reforms.

The party chairman said it has not been easy for the PDP
operating under a ruling party whose understanding of democracy is
“impunity, intimidation and coercion”.

Secondus spoke while receiving a team of Election, Party
Monitoring Department of the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) at the PDP Abuja secretariat on Monday.

According to him, the 2019 elections demonstrated the height of
electoral impunity that set the nation’s electoral development
progressively backwards.

The party chairman said the elections eroded the credibility of
the electoral process and the integrity of the electoral umpire,
adding that the military hijacked the process in different parts of
the country.

Secondus said: “We stand vindicated in the eyes of many
electoral watchers as all our fears and apprehensions ahead of the
elections came to fruition in the general election of February and
March this year.

“The preceding governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states
earlier and the latest being the November 16, 2019 gubernatorial
election in Bayelsa and Kogi states.

“Despite a standing lawful court ruling that military should be
kept at a distance during elections as secondary security, we have
all watched how they not only took over the primary security role
from the police, but also in some instances, dictated and even
connived with some INEC officials.

“Nigerians have watched how the electoral body, unable to
control the military, relinquished their responsibility to them and
still curiously went ahead to authenticate such fraud”.

The party chairman called on INEC to immediately initiate moves
for the amendment of the Electoral Act, with the view to legalising
electronic voting and removing the influence of the military as
primary security during elections.

Secondus regretted that unlike the PDP, the All Progressives
Congress (APC) is not disposed to any electoral law that will
prevent manipulation of the system.

He accused the electoral body of conniving with the APC to
compromise the electoral process in the 2019 presidential election
and governorship elections in Ekiti, Osun, Kano, Kogi and Bayelsa
states.

The party chairman charged INEC to be at the forefront of the
process to have legal frame work for the conduct of free, fair and
credible elections.

“Such legal framework should address the issue of security,
electronic voting and collation of results and punishment for
electoral offenders.

“The survival and sustenance of our democracy rest squarely on
the integrity of the electoral commission which will derive from
the character and the impartiality of its operatives.

“The effect of bad elections in our polity has been far
reaching, stagnating the political and economic development and
permanently hoisting on the people unpopular and incompetent
leaders.

“The tension and uncertainty in the country today is clearly
fallout of election mishap in February. Free, fair and credible
election is exactly what PDP and indeed global democracy demand and
expect from INEC”, the party chairman said.

Responding, the leader of the INEC team, Mr. Musa Husunu, a
Deputy Director in the Election and Party Monitoring Department,
said the team would take the PDP chairman’s message to the
leadership of the electoral body.