PDP Afraid Of Its Own Shadow Over Likely Electoral Fraud In 2019 Polls
HON. EGBUNA AMUTA
It is obvious that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which ruled Nigeria from 1999 to 2015 is today jittery over its imminent defeat in this year’s general elections. The party has in recent times severally accused the present ruling political party in the country, the All Progressives Congress, APC, of plotting to rig the 2019 general. While not exculpating the APC, whose recent victories in Ekiti and Osun governorship elections were suspect, one would not hesitate to observe that the PDP is engaging in sheer exaggeration of facts, scare mongering and crass propaganda in order to elicit undeserved sympathy from Nigerian citizens.
PDP’s attitude in this regard reminds one of the saying in Igboland that; “a professional killer does not want any man with machete to (even innocently), walk behind him”. This is because when the party was in power between 1999 and 2015, it brazenly rigged all general elections conducted in Nigeria, save that it came to its wits end in the last general polls in Nigeria. In 2003, the PDP under the Chief Olusegun Obasanjo presidency openly committed electoral fraud when late Dr. Abel Guobadia was chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. The party fraudulently captured the whole of Southwest states from Alliance for Democracy, AD, except Lagos where Alhaji Bola Tinubu held sway as governor. PDP also stole the mandate freely given to the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA by the electorate in the entire Southeast states because of their love for late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who was the presidential candidate of the party in the 2003 general elections. It took APGA almost three years to by God’s grace, recover its stolen gubernatorial mandate only in Anambra state through the judicial process in March 2006.
The 2007 general elections which Obasanjo regarded as; “a do or die affair” was apparently the most callously rigged polls in the history of Nigeria and probably the African continent. The main beneficiary of that “Iwuruwuru” polls, late President Umaru Yar’adua, publicly admitted that his election was flawed. The 2011 general elections which brought former President Goodluck Jonathan was equally rigged but not in the magnitude of the 2007 polls. Again, in 2015, the Peoples Democratic Party rigged the elections but did not succeed entirely. Internal crises and alliance by disgruntled members of the party, the defunct All Congress of Nigeria, ACN, All Nigerian Peoples Party, ANPP, Congress for Progressive Change, CPC and faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance led by Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo state coalesced to form the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Given its pedigree of rigging the PDP is today scare stiff that the ruling APC would rig the 2019 general polls. Despite the outcome of last year’s the Ekiti and Osun gubernatorial elections, the APC has not demonstrated that it is as vicious as the PDP in electoral malpractices. In 2017, despite prodding by some unscrupulous members of his party, President Muhammadu Buhari refused to order the rigging of the Anambra State gubernatorial election.
Notwithstanding its massive propaganda, PDP seems to have lost the 2019 general polls. Its governors in Ebonyi, Enugu and Abia states are not enamoured with the choice of Mr. Peter Obi, as the running mate by the party’s presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. They are therefore not working hard for the success of the Atiku/Obi presidential ticket. Anambra is totally APGA while Imo state which is being governed by APC is up for grabs by APGA due to bad governance of Rochas Okorocha, and intractable internal crisis in the APC in the state.
The entire hierarchy of PDP in the Northeast, where Atiku comes from has almost defected to the APC. The Southwest is most likely to vote massively for APC, while Akwa Ibom and Cross River states in South South are likely to gravitate from PDP to APC. Edo is already an APC state. Rivers and Bayelsa are likely to remain with the PDP due to the Wike and Jonathan factors, while Delta state is likely to give Buhari more than twenty five percent of her votes even though it might be retained by the PDP. Votes in the North Central would be shared amongst PDP, APC and APGA but the Northwest which has the highest voting population would be swept by Buhari’s APC. After this year’s polls, the PDP would be seriously devastated while APGA which undoubtedly would have expanded its coast might for the sake of a president of Igbo extraction in 2023, consider an alliance with the APC just as the defunct ACN teamed up with other political parties in 2015 to kick out the PDP from the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Hon. Egbuna Amuta
Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Grassroots Media Mobilisation.
