Polls: PDP Wants Nasarawa REC Replace

Ahead of Saturday’s Governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Nasarawa State has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to withdraw the ailing resident electoral commissioner (REC) of Nasarawa State, Alhaji Abdullahi Umar Danyaya. Also, the party has raised the alarm over the plot by the All Progressives Congress (APC) government in the state to brand already purchased Hilux vehicles as INEC’s duty vehicles during Saturday’s election with the sole aim of gaining easy access into sensitive areas to intimidate the electorate and manipulate results. Addressing journalists yesterday, the director, media and
publicity of the PDP Governorship Campaign Organisation, Chief Philip Dada, called on the INEC chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega and the inspector general of police, Suleiman Abba, to urgently address the “worrisome developments”. He said the REC is reportedly having serious health challenges which had prevented him from carrying out his duties efficiently, leading to his personal assistant becoming the de facto REC. “Apart from the REC’s ailing condition, we can authoritatively state that his PA is a close friend of the Al-Makura senior’s son, who was only recently transferred from the Karu INEC office to the state headquarters for obvious reasons. He is the de facto REC in the state because his boss can hardly walk for two metres without requiring physical support,” he asserted stressing that the situation was posing serious threat to the credibility of the electoral process. He further alleged that the APC government, led by Alhaji Tanko Al-Makura, has recruited and armed thugs who are to be deployed to different strategic locations solely to intimidate the opposition PDP officials and candidates, its supporters and to connive with INEC officials to ensure that those sympathetic to the course of the PDP are disenfranchised through late release of electoral materials. The party said, “Unless the INEC acts fast, the people may be worked up, frustrated and compelled to respond in whatever way they could to the ill-willed tactics of the APC, adding that this would not augur well for the state and democracy”. However, Chief Dada reiterated the party’s confidence to clinch the governorship and State House of Assembly polls noting that aside from the Presidential election won by PDP, the 2013 local councils’ poll which it won in 11 LGs clearly gave indications of where the pendulum would swing. “The PDP will replicate its presidential poll victory in Nasarawa. The citizens will vote out the APC because rather than the party uniting the people of the state, it has tended to create division and disaffection among the people even in the face of under development.'' He appealed to the people of the state, both the indigenes and non-indigenes alike and the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), to remain calm and ignore whatever level of thuggery the government may unleashed on them adding that they should go out on Saturday to express their disaffection with the ruling APC with their votes.