Transmission Of Results: PDP Condemns Senate’s Optional Decision
The Peoples Democratic Party, Edo State has condemned the recent decision of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to make the real-time electronic transmission of election results optional.
In a terse statement by the state Publicity Secretary of the opposition PDP,Barr. Dan Osa-Ogbegie,he described the Senate’s decision as retrogressive.His words:”this retrogressive move is a calculated assault on electoral integrity, a deliberate rollback of hard-won democratic safeguards, and a brazen invitation to electoral manipulation.
” Nigeria has suffered far too long under poor leadership produced by tainted processes. Our people bear the daily cost of wrong choices imposed through flawed elections,collapsing public services, insecurity, economic hardship, and a governance culture divorced from accountability. At this historic juncture, the Nigerian people must be allowed to freely choose those who superintend over their affairs. That freedom is hollow unless all facilities for free, fair, transparent, and verifiable elections are firmly entrenched in law and practise.
” Real-time transmission of results is not a luxury. It is the backbone of modern electoral credibility. It deters manipulation at collation centres, closes the gap between polling units and final tallies, and restores public confidence. To make it “optional” is to re-open the dark corridors where figures are manufactured, mandates are traded, and the will of the people is subverted.
Continuing,Osa -Ogbegie said,” history is instructive. Under the Peoples Democratic Party, particularly during the administrations of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria took decisive steps to strengthen the independence of the electoral umpire and to deepen public trust in elections. Reforms were pursued in good faith. Elections became more competitive. Institutions breathed. Indeed, President Yar’Adua openly acknowledged imperfections and set in motion reforms that culminated in credible processes, while President Jonathan’s tenure entrenched an atmosphere where the ballot counted and incumbency could be defeated. Those years stand in stark contrast to the present drift.
“Since the advent of the APC, Nigeria has been dragged downhill on virtually every front. Most alarming is the descent into mindless election rigging and the normalisation of impunity. Instead of consolidating transparency through technology, the APC is now engineering legal escape routes to weaken it. One must therefore ask the obvious question: why is the APC afraid of the people freely electing who they want? How can a President who boasts of having governors, ministers, and senators in his pocket be frightened of a transparent process that merely transmits results as cast at the polling unit?
“This Senate decision is not about flexibility. It is about control. It is about muzzling the opposition, constricting civic space, and railroading a predetermined outcome upon a weary nation. Nigeria is too fragile for this recklessness. Democracy cannot survive where rulers fear transparency and legislatures legislate opacity.
” We call on the Senate to immediately reconsider and upturn this dangerous decision. We urge all well-meaning Nigerians, civil society organisations, professional bodies, and the media to rise in defence of the ballot. We also call on the international community to pay close attention and to intervene to stop the ruling party and the President from plunging Nigeria into avoidable crises through anti-democratic engineering”,Edo PDP state Publicity Secretary posited.
