The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Tuesday, February 10, 2015 accused the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) of attempting to heat up the polity and causing political tension, following insinuations by the APC that the Federal Government coerced the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to postpone the general election.
Deputy National Chairman of the PDP, Prince Uche Secondus, made this assertion while interacting with newsmen in Abuja, further berated the APC for accusing President Goodluck Jonathan of politicizing the military.
He said: “The APC is just playing to the gallery and unnecessarily overheating the system by beating the drums of war and shouting wolves where there is none.
“The truth is that INEC was not ready for the elections and lacks the ability and strength to say so. How can INEC say that the basic reason for the shift of the elections was the security crisis in the Northeast states of Borno, Adamawa, Yobe and Borno without telling Nigerians the challenges it is facing in the distribution of the Permanent Voter Cards.
“Let INEC tell Nigerians the details of the report submitted to it by the two United States Democracy Institutes. I mean the reports from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI).
“INEC is keeping quite on the report that was submitted to it as far back as January 20 or thereabout. If INEC is not for mischief, let the commission tell the world its level of preparedness in terms of training of more than 900,000 ad-hoc staff and the distribution of all sensitive materials.
“How can INEC claim to be ready for the elections when in some states, about 50 percent of the voters are yet to have collected the voter cards. In Lagos state with the highest number of voters, more than 33 percent are yet to collect their PVCs. Yet INEC says it is ready to conduct the elections. Is INEC out to disenfranchise eligible voters and then find another way to discredit the entire electoral system.
“What of the Card Reading Machines, has INEC text run these machines, is all the PVCs for the elections in the country. We have it on good authority that the PVCs for five or four states are not yet distributed, let alone collected by the eligible voters. INEC should be honest enough to tell Nigerians the truth than hiding under security reports.”
