All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that the elections should hold as scheduled and rejected the call by National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki for the elections to be postponed.
Col. Sambo Dasuki had earlier today asked for the postponement of the national election scheduled for next month so as to give INEC more time to allocate all Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) to the masses.
APC’s National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed recently released a press statement saying that Dasuki’s call is essentially Jonathan’s plot to push for the postponement of the polls using what he described as a cheap trick.
Lai Mohammed said: ”Now that we have found the smoking gun, we are urging the international community, in particular, to urgently extract a commitment from President Goodluck Jonathan that the elections will hold as scheduled next month, and that he would respect the outcome, just as we have said”.
“They know for sure that if they don’t postpone the elections, there is no way they can win. They are just terrified.”
APC also asked Nigerians to reject the plot, declaring that a postponement could undermine the nations constitutional rights.
The statement continued: ”After realizing it will be rejected by Nigerians who have borne the brunt of its mis-governance over the years, after realizing that its campaign of calumny against our presidential candidate has failed, the Jonathan Administration has now started to play its last card, which is the postponement of the election”.
They also believe that this election will be a very important one in shaping the future and direction of the country.
”Election is the lifeblood of democracy, the mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates. It is the only way for the citizenry to renew and refresh the governing process so they can get the most benefits out of democracy. Therefore, anyone that tries to sabotage this mechanism is aiming a dagger straight to the heart of democracy” it read.
APC also accused the present administration of using tricks to delay the election, including the plot to hide under the insurgency in the North-east and the unnecessary demand for secondary school leaving certificate of our presidential candidate and the DSS plan to hack into INEC’s database and also falsifying reports of Buhari’s health.
”They tried to hide under terrorist attacks in the North-east and the fact that Nigeria is at war to shift the elections, this did not fly.
They used the DSS to invade our Data Centre and then concoct the allegation that we are planning to hack into INEC’s Data Base, it did not fly as INEC said its Data Base cannot be hacked. They launched an aggressive campaign to convince Nigerians that our presidential candidate is not qualified to run because he has no secondary school-leaving certificate, but that also did not fly, as the certified results of his Cambridge examination have now been published for all to see.
”They went and procured a fake report showing our candidate is suffering from prostate cancer, hence he is not fit for the high office of President, but their antics were discovered when the health institution that purportedly issued the report disowned it.
”Now they have launched their last set of jokers, which include hiring willing hands to make the television rounds saying there is no way the elections could hold next month, ostensibly because INEC is not ready, even when the electoral umpire has said it is ready to conduct the polls.
”There are also alleged plans to stage-manage some high-profile cases of violence and arson, for which the opposition will be blamed and then its leaders arrested in droves, all in an effort to scuttle the polls. For those who find these hard to believe, we ask them to look at the sheer madness of a state governor placing a newspaper advert wishing our presidential candidate dead! The possible repercussions of this kind of provocative act are better imagined, had our party not been a peaceful party.
”In view of the above, we have decided to take our case to Nigerians and indeed the global community, so they can prevail on President Jonathan to allow the elections to hold as scheduled and to make a commitment to respect the outcome,” it said.
APC said that this was the first time that they have seen so much desperation from an incumbant government to keep power.
Buhari had yesterday revealed his school leaving certificate after the PDP demanded for his removal from the race for failing to provide it.
