CONTROVERSY has continued to trail the recent attack by the Presidency and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) on General Muhammadu Buhari over his warning against the consequences of rigging the 2015 polls as the Lagos State chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has chided the duo.
In a statement in Lagos, signed by the State ACNPublicity Secretary, Joe Igbokwe, the party said: "It aligns itself totally with the views expressed by Buhari that Nigeria risks very dire consequences should the PDP think that it will continue perpetrating electoral fraud and be allowed to benefit from it in 2015.
It therefore warned the PDP to take Buhari's warning serious and stop its present effort of blackmailing him with problems whose roots are traced to PDP buccaneers tendency with state power.
"When we try to ruminate what is happening in Edo State presently, where the PDP is trying to concoct sham registration exercises en route the state governorship election, we have good cause to believe with Buhari that the PDP, with its amoral lust for power, risks setting the country on fire in 2015 should it continue its nefarious acts of rigging every election and manipulating the judiciary to get away with such criminal acts.
It continued: "We know that ordinarily, the PDP would not react in the worrying manner it did if it was not planning to rig the forthcoming general elections as it has done previous elections, but we warn them that such planned rigging will spell doom for them. Their thinly disguised effort to talk down on any person that warns against rigging has given them out as a remorseless and shameless pack of electoral riggers who have masterminded the complete ruination of Nigeria through election rigging and treasury cleansing."
The party added: "From the worried reaction of the PDP to Buhari's statement, it should be gleaned that another audacious electoral heist is in the offing and it behoves all Nigerians of goodwill to unite and collectively rebuff PDP's effort to blackmail Buhari and quell the concern of Nigerians over the continued defacement of the country's electoral process through rigging by the PDP. We see through the unsecured attitude of the PDP to Buhari's warning and notice a veiled commitment of the PDP to continue rigging of the country's election. We will resist this and will encourage our supporters to resist further plans to rig elections in Nigeria in 2015.
"Lagos ACN is adding its voice to those of concerned Nigerians who are suffering the collective burden of successive PDP regimes that stole their ways to power and employs that to loot the country dry that it is either we have free, fair and credible election in 2015 or there will be chaos across the country.
"We want to state that time has come for a country in the kind of miasma Nigeria is enmeshed in presently to seek ways of walking out of the problem and we believe that PDP's shameless defense of election rigging is a sure way of deepening the unending rot Nigeria has been sunk in for the past thirteen years. We believe that a free and fair election where Nigerians elect competent leaders that will steer us out of the PDP created doldrums is the starting point to that national recovery."
The Guardian