PDP heads to tribunal in Ekiti, picks holes in poll results
Gbenga Sodeinde, Ado Ekiti
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti state has picked holes in the outcome of the general elections conducted in the state.
The PDP which described the elections as a charade which defied all decent, civilized and acceptable approaches to democracy vowed to go to tribunal.
PDP state Chairman, Chief Gboyega Oguntuwase, said the Presidential, National Assembly and House of Assembly elections in the state were characterized with violence, ballot-snatching, ballot stuffing and vote-buying allegedly perpetrated by the All Progressives Congress (APC) members to win all available legislative seats in the state.
Oguntuwase, who spoke in Ado Ekiti on Sunday while reviewing the elections, said that the party has resolved not to allow the rape of democracy go unchallenged, hence the resolve to approach the judiciary as the only democratic process available.
He said that “we have given all our candidates in the National Assembly elections the go-ahead to pursue the cases against the elections at the tribunal because if the broad daylight robbery against democratic attitudes go unchallenged, it is going to consume the nation and our democratic norms and process.
“The general elections in Ekiti state were bedeviled by violence, ballot snatching, threat to lives, threat to properties and the entire state was riddled with uncivilized attitude to politics.”
The PDP chairman who hinged the resolve to challenge the National Assembly elections on the party’s commitment to purifying the system, however, did not disclose the team of lawyers being lined up by the party for the legal battle for tactical reasons.
Although, Oguntuwase accused the APC of all known electoral offences in the House of Assembly election, he said that “we might not have the capacity for litigation here, but we are not foreclosing the possibility. But, I can tell you categorically that our national Assembly candidates will challenge the uncivilized approach of APC to democracy.”
