PDP’s Haunted by Past Misdeeds, Says Oshiomhole

Yari submits Osun primary report

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Adams Oshiomhole, has dismissed the reported threat by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that it might boycott the next year’s general elections as irrelevant and an indication that the party was being haunted by its past misdeeds, where it treated electoral contest as a do or die affair.

This is coming as the Chairman of the Osun APC Primary Election Committee and Governor of Zamfara State, Abdulaziz Yari, has submitted the report of the election to Oshiomhole.

Speaking on Saturday night at the party headquarters in Abuja while receiving the report of the primary election, Oshiomhole described the move by the PDP as akin to that of “a rabbit jumping out of a hole in the afternoon because a hunter has come to put fire to smoke it out”.

“We know that it has already seen its end. So, I think that they are haunted by own forces and because they have taken election matters as if it is a do- or -die affair and they perfected the language of rig them out and let them go to court; now their rigging machine has been destroyed, how can they survive without it,” he added.

Oshiomhole who insisted that the APC would not be intimidated by the threat of the PDP, said the ruling party was committed to the sustenance of democracy and the sanity of ‘one man, one vote’.
He also boasted that if the APC could defeat the PDP while it still held power in 2015, it would repeat the feat now that PDP is out of office and divided.

“We are not like them; we have worked hard to defeat the PDP. If we were able to defeat the PDP while they were in power, when they do not have factions, when all the founding fathers and founding mothers were in the house, we defeated them and the Nigerian people rejected them on account of 16 years of absolute misrule at the peak of our prosperity as a nation; if with all those huge revenues that accrued to them people still complain of bad rule, whether from the North or South, they have nothing new to offer to Nigerians,” he said.

“The glue that held them together which was cheap money from the federal treasury has been cut off. What they now have, they will be chewing all day, all night and that it is almost three and half years they were out of power, now they are worried how they can sustain power,” he added.

He said nobody should threaten democracy, adding that Nigerians have accepted it, bought into it, have shown their belief in it by the sheer number of people that voted in the last time.

He added, “This has shown that beyond political parties, Nigerians are committed to the sustenance of democracy. This democracy is not at the mercy of any particular political party. We will not be intimidated and we are committed to one man, one vote, we will sustain it. That is the way to go.”

While commenting on the outcome of Osun governorship primary election, Oshiomhole said he was very excited at the success recorded by the party in use of direct voting method.

He however, said that any of the aspirants who was not satisfied with the outcome, would have the opportunity to present such complaint before a three- man appeal panel on beginning sitting today.

According to the APC chairman, over 200,000 party members participated in in the exercise, adding that there is every likelihood that these members will act as canvassers for the party’s candidate for him to emerge victorious.
“We will try as much as to build this flexibility and where we think it is necessary we will not hesitate to apply the direct primary.

“Our message to PDP is that because we do not have a ringing machine the only thing we have is to use persuasion to convince our people to vote for us,” he said.
In his short remark, Yari said the winner of the governorship primary, Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola polled 127,017 to pick the ticket.

Yari shocked everyone in the hall when he confessed that he did not quite understand the direct primary method until he got more clarifications about it.
The governor however, recommended the adoption of the direct primary to other states and political parties based on the success recorded in Osun State exercise.

Apart from being cost effective, Yari said the method was very beneficial to the party in the sense that it served the dual purpose of also mobilising party members for the main election.
Yari explained that the reason his committee had to rush back to Abuja to submit its report at the weekend was to enable the party to beat the deadline of submitting the candidate’s name to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday.

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