The Nigeria’s All Progressives Congress (APC) Saturday threw a challenge to the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to answer questions on its claim that is working in cahoots with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to rig the coming elections in the face of fact it is the only party being deprived of fielding candidates at elections.
The APC was reacting to Friday’s judgment of the Supreme Court affirming the lower court’s verdict that there was no primary election in Rivers State and that as a result the party could not be allowed to field candidates in the March 2 governorship and House of Assembly elections in the state. The judgement is now being celebrated by the Governor of Rivers State, Mr. Nyesom Wike, who is governorship candidate of PDP in the elections
The case was filed in court by some of the gladiators within the APC in Rivers State against INEC’s refusal to recognize APC’s candidates for the elections saying there were no primaries.
Arguing that it, of a surety, had primaries in Rivers though admitting there might be little issues which were not peculiar to only it but also to others particularly PDP, the APC expressed a thought that it deserved to field candidates for the state elections, even as it asked, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu if the way to work in cahoots with electoral body by a party was for the umpire subject the party to the kind of scrutiny it did to APC whereas PDP that had worse situation and yet had continued to accuse the APC was left untouched.
It however submitted that its legal department is looking into the judgment of the Supreme Court based on facts available to it and promised to make his position known in due course.
“We know we did the right thing. We had our primaries even though there are issues around it. I don’t know why it appears the APC is the only party that is being subjected to this kind of scrutiny from the electoral body.
“It is the same APC that PDP has continued to raise flags as being the party that wants to rig election and is supposed to be working in cahoots with INEC. If this is the way to work in cahoots with INEC, we need to ask further questions.”
It said, “Our legal department is looking into the judgement of the Supreme Court. It is not the kind of judgement we looked forward to base on the facts that we are aware of. The only option before us now is to review this judgement and see what other means that is legal. We think we deserve to field candidates in Rivers state.
“We know what we did in Rivers compared to what PDP did in many of the thirty-six states. PDP shouldn’t field candidates in many states if the same parameters applied by the electoral body are applied to the PDP. Our legal department will review the outcome of this as unpalatable as it is and we will be able to say categorically the next step we might be taking and come out with it in due course.”
