Ondo election: Why we can’t congratulate APC yet - PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Monday said it can’t congratulate Rotimi Akeredolu as Governor of Ondo State due to the appeal by the All Progressives Congress, APC, Caretaker Chairman, Governor Mai Mala Buni.

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said Buni is begging for endorsement of the outcome of the election while the structure that produced Akeredolu was faulty.

Ologbondiyan stated this in a statement he signed titled: “Why we can’t congratulate APC yet.”

According to the PDP spokesman: “The attention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been drawn to a press conference by the chairman of the contentious National Caretaker Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Governor Mai Mala Buni, wherein he begged the PDP to congratulate the APC over the outcome of the October 10, Ondo governorship election.

“It is indeed ludicrous and completely absurd that Governor Buni is begging for endorsement of the election in spite of his awareness that the internal mechanism that produced his party’s candidate, as presided over by him, was faulty.

“Nigerians already know that the emergence of Governor Mai Buni in the national leadership of his party is a subject of litigation and as such his nomination of any candidate for the election is seen, even among his party members, as a nullity until the court says otherwise.

“It will therefore be pathetic for Governor Mai Buni to attempt to use the PDP to build something on the nothingness of his position in his party. The PDP is too structured as a party to be used by anybody, under any guise, in that regard.

“Perhaps, Governor Buni is not aware that information available in the public space and to the PDP showed that a very top-level management official of the NNPC, through a northwest governor elected on the platform of the APC, diverted huge amounts of money, in dollar, from our nation oil resources to fund vote buying in the Ondo election.

“Instead of begging the PDP for congratulatory message, Governor Buni should rather speak to this disturbing stealing of oil money to fund his party’s vote buying at the expense of Nigerians who are bearing the brunt of increase in the pump price of fuel and corruption in the oil sector under the APC.

“While our party will, in due course, make its official position on the outcome of the Ondo election known, the PDP urges President Muhammadu Buhari to take steps that will accelerate the amendment of the Electoral Act, which was stalled following his failure to sign the amended Act of the National Assembly in 2019.”