The All
Progressives Congress (APC) has warned Nigerians not to succumb to politicians that
believed in voting buying as 2019 general election nears.
The Acting National Publicity Secretary of APC, Yekini
Nabena while reacting to allegations of vote buying in the just concluded
presidential primary of the PDP made this call.
He said, “Atiku is known as a super-rich Nigerian who
entrenched the undemocratic practice of buying votes of delegates. During the
APC National Convention in 2014, he spent several millions of dollars to buy
delegates’ votes and emerged third, after Buhari and Rabiu Kwankwaso.
“On Sunday, he
reportedly bought over virtually all the PDP delegates and was declared the
winner of the PDP presidential primaries.
“With these huge expenses incurred to secure the PDP
ticket, how will Atiku recoup his “investment” if not from the public treasury
should he win the Presidency? the APC questioned.
The APC further scored the PDP presidential
candidate ‘abysmally low’ in terms of character citing
his relationship with his former boss, Olusegun Obasanjo.
According to the party, he has proven to be
‘untrustworthy and unreliable’.
The APC accused Atiku of defecting from one party to
another, adding that if he loses the presidential election in 2019, he will
again defect from the PDP to another political platform.
Meanwhile, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
has described the call by APC has baseless.
In
a statement credited to Kola
Ologbondiyan, national publicity secretary of the PDP, he said the
All Progressives Congress (APC) has been “uneasy and apprehensive” since former
Vice-President Atiku Abubakar emerged its presidential candidate.
He said the
“spurious allegations” show that the APC and Buhari are afraid of the
Abubakar’s candidacy.
“The claims, by
APC, of vote-buying at PDP national convention, is, therefore, not only false
but completely unfounded and symptomatic of a party that has totally lost
bearing and now engaged in rumour mongering,” the statement read.
“However, for
us as a party, such allegation from the APC is not unexpected given that it had
tried everything possible to scuttle our national convention and Presidential
primary but woefully failed, hence the desperation to engage in attempt to discredit
the process that has been acclaimed as the beat in our political history.
“Unlike the APC
that has an unpopular Presidential candidate, who has failed in governance,
foisted on it without an election, the whole world watched with excitement as
12 aspirants contested the PDP Presidential primary, where delegates drawn from
respected Nigerians across the country, freely voted for a candidate of their
choice.
“To the
amusement of Nigerians, the APC conducted a non-contested convention in which
it declared President Buhari as ‘winner’ with over 14 million fictitious votes.
In their desperation, they forgot that ‘winning’ as a word connotes contest.”
The PDP warned
the ruling APC to steer clear of its party, saying Nigerians are only
interested in the candidate that can bring the nation out of the “ugly
situation Buhari has sunk us”.
“While we note
that the APC is suffering from a pre-defeat trauma, we caution this fading
party and its presidential candidate, who had failed our nation, to steer clear
of our party and get ready for issue-based campaign ahead of the 2019
elections.
“It is
instructive to state that their attempt at smear campaign against our
candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, will fail as Nigerians are interested only in
the candidate that can make a turn around of the ugly situation Buhari
Presidency has sunk us.”
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