10th November, 2010
The dust raised by the brickbat hauled at the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, by the National Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Okwesilieze Nwodo, is yet to settle. ACN has replied the PDP Chief with equal measure of vitriol. Nwodo had claimed that ACN used fraudulent documents to win its governorship election petition in Ekiti State, while ACN replied that Nwodo’s statement was a direct attack on the judiciary and yet another indication that the PDP is a bad loser. ACN also accused PDP of trying to intimidate the judiciary.
In view of the overwhelming evidence that the April 14, 2007 governorship election in Ekiti State was rigged in favour of the sacked Segun Oni-led PDP government, any right thinking person would have taken in good faith the 14 October, 2010 verdict of the Appeal Court that brought Kayode Fayemi to power. However, Nwodo chose to engage in muckraking to discredit ACN and by so doing, the judiciary that redressed the injustice earlier done by the election petition tribunal.
These pertinent questions ACN asked Nwodo are still begging for answers because he seems to have cried wolf where there is none: at what point did the PDP know that the documents ACN used were fake? What did PDP counsel do when they realised that the documents were fake? Why is Nwodo crying out now that the Court of Appeal is about to deliver judgement on another sham governorship election in Osun State that has been a subject of fierce legal battle between the incumbent PDP governor, Olagunsoye Oyinlola and Rauf Aregbesola of ACN since 2007?
Everybody knows that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, under the disgraced Maurice Iwu rigged the 2007 elections in favour of the PDP virtually all over the country. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua, who benefited from the flawed election admitted this during his inauguration on 29 May, 2009 and promised to reform the electoral system to ensure that there is free, fair and credible election in the country in future. This led to the setting up of the Justice Uwais Committee that came up with some drastic reforms that Nigerians hailed but which have not been implemented.
In view of this, it is out of place for PDP to lay claim to winning elections after losing court battles over such elections that were clearly manipulated in its favour by Iwu’s INEC. Many believe, just as we do, that the PDP deserved to lose Ekiti State and the prospect of losing Osun again is already unsettling the party, hence its resort to baseless allegations that smack of bringing the judiciary into utter disrepute.
The mass defection of members of PDP to ACN in various states across the country ahead of the 2011 general elections is a clear signal that the centre can no longer hold in PDP. The self-styled largest political party in Africa is drifting dangerously and may gradually be losing its grip on power to other political parties.
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