The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of subterranean moves to exclude its candidate, Engr Musa Wada from the governorship election schedule to hold in Kogi state on November 16.
In a press statement signed by Wada’s spokesman, Faruk Adejoh-Audu, the party described the APC candidate, Governor Yahaya Bello as a “petrified candidate who having squandered his tenure inflicting poverty, hunger and violence on the people and attracted ill-will is now desperate to use subterfuge to eliminate every viable opponent from the ballot.”
Adejoh-Audu noted that the public posturing of Senator Smart Adeyemi and APC deputy governorship candidate, Mr Edward Onoja have not only confirmed the involvement of the state government but they have also betrayed the motive of the vicious gun attack at the PDP governorship primary in Lokoja.
“We have received information about a desperate, diabolic and surreptitious plot by the outgoing Government of Alh Yahaya Bello to orchestrate the exclusion of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)Candidate, Engr Musa Wada from the ballot using the judiciary.
“We are in possession of recorded conversations and other evidences that proves that the PDP Vice Chairman Ogugu Ward 3, Olamaboro Local Government Area, Mr John Abraham which is also the ward of Mr Edward Onoja the APC running mate of Bello was induced with the sum of N20 million to agree to be used as a litigant to undermine the primaries of the PDP.
“As at the time of the conversation this rural PDP executive member of humble means has already been generously given the sum of one million Naira to meet four lawyers including a Senior Advocate of Nigerian(SAN) hired by Bello’s government to execute their atrocious plot. We challenge the outgoing government to deny this revelations.
“We heard of this plot immediately it was hatched and expected that they will go to court and serve us with the processes to enable us join issues immediately, but it’s now obvious that there’s a sinister twist to even this craven process because whilst there’s been reports of the suit in the media since almost three weeks ago, we have neither been served nor have we been able to confirm in what court it was instituted or if it was instituted at all.
“But the Bello campaign has continued to boast and threaten that the PDP will not have a candidate at the polls until the court has decided. The latest of these threats was the one uttered by the campaign Director General, Former Senator Representing Kogi West District, Mr Smart Adeyemi at a press conference in Lokoja on Friday.
“This is the third time Mr Adeyemi is openly bragging that the PDP candidate will be excluded from the ballot because it’s primaries was flawed. Before him Mr Bello’s running mate had equally bragged in a WhatsApp chatroom that the PDP will have no candidate because the primaries was inconclusive.
“The lynch-pin of their desperate confidence is based on the sporadic gun attack on the venue of the primaries when the process was drawing to a close.
“If anyone ever doubted those behind the criminal attack which took place unchallenged in the presence of security agencies and less than half a kilometer from the Kogi State Directorate of State Security (DSS), Mr Adeyemi and Mr Onoja seem to have not only confirmed the involvement of the outgoing government but they have also betrayed the motive of the vicious gun attack.
“It is interesting that Onoja’s WhatsApp comment declaring the Primaries inconclusive because of the gun attack came just a few hours after the process was successfully completed despite the attack.
“Curiously that same day a statement was issued by a spokesman on behalf of Mr Bello himself blaming unknown PDP members for attack. This is even when no investigation was known to have even commenced!
“The question is why not a single aspirant in PDP or any member of the party for that matter has attempted to exploit any legal benefit from this attack? And why is it only APC chieftains led Mr Adeyemi and Mr Onoja that are taking advantage of this criminality and menacingly flaunting it as the anchor of their game plan to exclude the PDP from the ballot?
“The attack was to prevent the Kogi PDP from presenting a candidate because the window for primaries in INEC timetable ended on 5th of September, a date which would have been impossible for the party to plan and hold another primaries if their gun attack had been successful in aborting the process.
“But rather than hide their face in shame for this failed criminal act, the desperate APC lords of violence have been unwittingly advertising their culpability in the dastard enterprise.
“What is unfolding from the gun attacks, to the clandestine litigation, the bravado of Mr Adeyemi and Mr Onoja declaring inconclusive a process certified even by INEC is a clear picture of a very petrified candidate Yahaya Bello who having squandered his tenure inflicting poverty, hunger and violence on the people and attracted ill-will is now desperate to use subterfuge to eliminate every viable opponent from the ballot.
“Mr Bello successfully schemed to get the APC to disqualify all the opponents that posed any modicum of challenge to him in his party primaries.
“Curiously, his major challenger in his Senatorial District, Barrister Natasha Akpoti of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) who would have forestalled the comprehensive rigging plan of the APC in the area has been illegally and brazenly disqualified and excluded from the ballot by the INEC high command!
“Bello is confident that he can manipulate the judiciary to pull out another disqualification stunt with the PDP Candidate or in the alternative by the time he has been voted out, he will get a judgment that will void the election of the PDP on the basis of primaries like it happened in Zamfara.
“It is disheartening that a governor who should ordinarily depend on his record of achievements in governance in four years is rather involved in all forms of nefarious plots to undermine the democratic process to return to office.
“The travails of Bello should be instructive to politicians all over the country that once you are guilty of misruling the people, you can never be at peace when your fate lies in their hands. Bello can keep running to orchestrate all manners of dubious and devious plots but that won’t save him. It is too late in the day. The time of reckoning is here!
“The people are already resolved to evict this plague of a government on November 16, 2019, God willing,” the statement read.
