The All Progressives Congress has
rejected the call by the National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retd.),
for the postponement of next month’s general elections ostensibly to give INEC
more time to distribute all Permanent Voter Cards.
It warned that “under no
circumstance must the elections be scuttled.”
In a statement in Abuja yesterday by
its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the call
by Dasuki, during an event at the Chatham House in London yesterday, had
“exposed the hitherto clandestine plot by the Goodluck Jonathan’s Administration
to push for the postponement of the polls, using all sorts of cheap tricks.”
APC added, “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.”
APC said Dasuki was only seeking to
buy time for Jonathan’s campaign to gather steam by hinging his postponement
call on the delay in PVC distribution.
“They know for sure that if they
don’t postpone the elections, there is no way they can win. They are just
terrified,” the party said.
It called on Nigerians to reject in
its entirety the “ongoing orchestrated plot” by the Jonathan administration to
postpone the elections, saying the constitutional crisis that would be
triggered by such postponement was capable of undermining the nation’s
democracy.
APC added, “After realising it will
be rejected by Nigerians, who have borne the brunt of its mis-governance over
the years, after realising 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.”
It said the importance of elections
could not be over-emphasised.
“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 at the heart of
democracy,” the party said.
democracy,” the party said.
Comments
Post a Comment