Why PDP, Secondus, Atiku threatened to boycott 2019 polls

Uche Secondus

The  leadership of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has threatened to pull out of the 2019 general elections if the electoral umpire and security agencies fail to demonstrate sufficient level of impartiality expected from them by Nigerians and the rest of the world.

This is even as a presidential aspirant on the platform of the party and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, said, yesterday, that the party would resist any attempt by anybody to rig the elections. National Chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus, stated this at the party’s national secretariat, yesterday, while playing host to a combined delegation of the International Republican Institute, IRI, and National Democratic Institute, NDI. Secondus, who lamented what he called the manipulation of vote figures by Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the recently concluded Ekiti governorship election in favour of All Progressives Congress, APC, also accused the Police of chasing away PDP agents from various polling centres, particularly areas known to be its strongholds. He said: “We are still contemplating on whether we will participate in the 2019 elections or not. We are yet to take a decision on this.  We believe that if we are not sure that both INEC and security agencies will be transparent and that they will not take side, we will take a decision. ‘’We are consulting as to whether we shall participate or not; because you are participating against security agencies and INEC who have colluded to alter figures. So, we are in a dilemma. We are not sure that the security agencies and INEC would be impartial and transparent. In the Ekiti elections, there were instances where our party agents’ tags were removed and given to the APC agents. “There were clear cases of manipulation, ballot snatching and harassment of our party agents.” Leader of the delegation, Pauline Beckamp, said the institutes were at the party’s headquarters to ascertain the challenges it was facing ahead of the general elections, in order to engage the umpire, with a view to finding solutions. We’ll resist attempt to rig 2019 general election —Atiku Meanwhile, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has said PDP would resist any attempt by anybody to rig the elections.