“PDP Governors Forum Err on INEC Card Reader Machine”

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, Nigeria 2015 Election Friday, March 13th, 2015

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has faulted the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors Forum for unjustifiably opposing the use of card reader machines (CRMs) for the 2015 elections, noting that the forum’s position “is an attempt to promote electoral frauds and rigging.”

The party, also, added that rejecting the use of CRMs for the next general elections suggested that the forum had demonstrated that the PDP at large “is not committed to credible elections and deepening the country’s democratic process.”

In a statement issued on Thursday in Lagos, the APC National Vice-Chairman, Chief Pius Akinyelure described the forum’s opposition to the use of card reader machines as antithetic to robust democratic culture and credible electoral process.

Akinyelure, who was a former Executive Director in Mobil Nigeria Plc., explained that it was indeed worrisome that the forum “has opposed to initiatives that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) put in place to guarantee the credibility of the 2015 elections.”

The vice-chairman added that the forum “has been plotting the removal of the INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, who has set all necessary machineries in motion in order to achieve the successful conduct of 2015 elections.”

He lamented that the forum adopted a do-or-die approach “to stop the use of card reader machine, which all critical stakeholders in the Nigeria Project including the civil society organisations (CSOs) have approved given its capacity to help realise credible elections against what we had in the past.”

He, therefore, urged Nigerians to speak any person or platform canvassing against the use of CRMs in the next general election, saying disapproving the devising “amounts to disapproving credible elections that produce change. It also amounts to disapproving a better country where every vote counts.”

He explained that the forum as well as the PDP was opposed to the use of CRMs because it was afraid of defeat in the next elections citing the massive support the APC presidential candidate, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari enjoined in all parts of Nigeria, especially in South-West Nigeria.

He said the CRM initiative was introduced by the INEC, an agency of the federal government and the CRM project was also funded solely funded by the same federal government for the purpose of achieving credible elections.

He, therefore, wondered why the PDP-led federal government “is not opposing the CRM initiative. What is then the purpose of spending billions of naira to procure the devices when the federal government knows it will not support? This simply shows the PDP only wins elections by rigging. This is no longer fashionable. It is no longer acceptable and the time for change is now.”