APC presidential primary: Buhari has lost hope of winning genuine votes – PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Sunday, lampooned the Buhari Presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) for posting fictitious figures as votes secured by President Muhammadu Buhari at the APC Presidential primary.

The opposition party stated that the aim of the ‘fictitious figures’ was to hoodwink Nigerians and create an impression of massive support for President Buhari.

The PDP, in a statement issued by its national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said the resort to the allocation of fake figures has shown that President Buhari and APC have lost hope of winning genuine votes in the 2019 general election and want to rely on allocation of fake votes to attempt to rig the main election.

“Nigerians will recall that the PDP had, in a statement on September 1, 2018, alerted of intelligence reports that the Presidency forced a direct presidential primary on the APC so as to “eliminate delegates accreditation and pave way for allocation of millions of conjured votes, which they intend to use as basis to authenticate the fictitious votes they intend to declare for President Buhari at the general elections”.

“The PDP had also alerted of how “very senior officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), including a blood relation of the President, who is in charge of the commission’s data center, masterminded and pushed the plot.

“It is therefore, ludicrous that 29 days after our statement, the Presidency and the APC staged a circus show, in their party’s state secretariats, in the name of Presidential primary and came up with fictitious figures as votes secured by President Buhari.

“Nigerians were thoroughly amused as they see through the lies in APC’s allocation of fictitious 2.9 million votes in Kano, 1.9 million in Lagos, 802,819 in Katsina, in addition to other conjured figures in other states.

“What the APC and the Buhari Presidency failed to note is that Nigerians are already aware that no ballot took place and that such figures cannot be tallied through mere voice vote involving few members of a derelict and disorganised party.

“Nigerians know that what counts in a general election is the participation of registered voters with Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and not fictitious figures from a padded party register or party members, many of who do not exist or hold PVCs.

“Moreover, the APC do not have the number of members it is posting as having participated in the “circus”.

“We want the APC and INEC to know that our party is already privy to the polling centers in certain states which they are planning to use to allocate fake votes for President Buhari in the 2019 general elections and that we have also devised legitimate strategies of exposing and dismantling such plans ahead of the elections, just as the PDP did in Osun State.

“The Buhari Presidency and the APC should know that their game is up and that no amount of machination will save them from imminent defeat in the 2019 general election, since Nigerians have already rejected them”