The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Friday charged the National Assembly to “save the nation’s democracy by immediately overriding” President Muhammadu Buhari’s refusal to sign the amendment of the Electoral Act.
PDP said the legislative action was imperative as the President’s decision was a “calculated attempt to hold the nation to ransom, inject crisis into the electoral process and ultimately scuttle the conduct of the 2019 general elections, seeing that there is no way he can win in a free and fair contest.”
A statement by PDP spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan said President Buhari’s repeated refusal to sign amendments passed to check rigging in the election, “raises issues of his sincerity of purpose and has the capacity to trigger political unrest and violence, which can, in turn, truncate our hard-earned democracy.”
The statement reads, “We invite Nigerians to note that this is the fourth time President Buhari is withholding assent on the amendment, without any cogent reason following his rejection by Nigerians.
“Nigerians can recall how the Buhari Presidency plotted to plunge the 2019 elections into a needless controversy by delaying the submission of the election budget to the National Assembly, presenting it at the time the legislators were commencing their annual vacation and asking for virement of funds already approved for development projects, instead of sending a fresh supplementary budget for the election.”
While urging the National Assembly to save our democracy and forestall an imminent electoral crisis, PDP also charged “all political parties, other critical stakeholders and Nigerians in general, to rise in the interest of our nation and demand the entrenching of rules and processes that will guarantee the conduct of free, fair and credible elections, as nothing short of that would be accepted.”
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