The defeat of PDP in last year’s presidential election has exposed the dirty and hideous underbelly of the party that wrecked Nigeria after 16 years of tortious cannibalism. The defeat still leaves the PDP in a state of shock and has forced it and its members to embark on every desperate measures to express the frustration of its members as well as sabotage the ensuing Buhari government policies. As an opposition party, PDP has leveraged on the sole tactics of bandying or responsibility and deigning such as opposition politics. But there must be an end to irresponsibility of the hue that was displayed on Edo elections. PDP must arrest itself than continually display such crass irresponsibility as opposition.
Since after its humbling last year by the APC, the party which is writhing on the pangs of death has striven desperately to explain away its humiliation and as usual has been looking far outside the real reasons why Nigerians dimpled it last year and these include; corruption, ineptitude, impunity and bad leadership. Put differently, PDP has been blaming every other factor but its liabilities but Nigerians know better and are ever glad to rid themselves of that huge burden the PDP constituted in their lives.
Since its electoral defeat, the fortunes of PDP has dipped abysmally low and how to approach every election presents it with such a huge problem that it has resorted to very shameful and venal means to avoid electoral defeats in every election since it was thrown out of power. It has avoided the ball and gone for the legs in its belief that the best way to stave off imminent atrophy is resorting to absurd banalism than reason.
Knowing that its previous electoral fortunes were by fraudulent manipulation of electoral process and security agencies while it was in power, the PDP, out if power has devised means tof staving off electoral defeats in each election and these include;
* Raising repetitive hoaxes of plans to rig every election by its opponents especially its nemesis and much feared foe; the APC.
* Mounting an extensive media hype of plans to rig every election, use security agencies to rig, and repeat such even when it goes no further to provide credible roof of its wolf crying.
* Prepare the ground to reject every election result even in places it has no foothold and go along to seek to make capital of such puerile gimmicks,
* Raise wild, specious and reckless allegations during every election to provide a landing for contesting such election results where it doesn’t favour it. If such election favour it, the PDP had been so shameless to laud the same process it farcically thumbed down as the best thing that ever happened to Nigeria.
* Forge and manufacture its own election results where it gives itself an overwhelming lead, even in the face of overwhelming evidences disproving such absurdity.
* Instigate its members and supporters to protest further release of results and undermine the process (The Orubebe way) where it feels election results are not favoring it.
* Go along to dispute every election result that does not favour it and do everything to discredit the results and the process even when they have no shred of evidence to sustain their childish tactics.
All these were in full display in Edo State during the just concluded governorship election where PDP, sensing it was losing so badly, went to address a media conference while results were coming in to the effect that the APC was planning to substitute the ‘real’ election results where it was leading with a fabricated election result which favours the APC.
PDP went along to call out its members to protest the results that were being announced and called for the cancelation of the result because it was not favoring it. Still insisting that the results INEC was releasing were fabricated, PDP said it had the ‘authentic’ results and later promised to release same to show that they won the election and not The APC. Having gradually gotten used to such pranks by the PDP, INEC didn’t allow itself to be blackmailed into aborting a baby that was already going through the birth process. It went ahead and announced the entire result, which shows that the APC had an unassailable lead in 13 out of the 18 local governments in an Edo where it had worked so hard to leave indelible footprints to banish the sad memories of PDP’s debauchery.
It is two days after election, and still counting, and the PDP is yet to release its ‘authentic’ results from the Edo gubernatorial election. It is rather sponsoring and marketing very assiduous indictment of an electoral process that was hugely transparent and which it even thumbed up when the process is going on.
Even as the PDP itself has grown uncomfortable from its usual refrain of ‘go to court’ with which it ran down each of its brazen electoral sleazed when it was in power, Nigerians would have loved to take a glimpse of PDP’s ‘authentic’ results which it promised to release for all Nigerians to see how it was robbed of victory. Why is the party demurring in doing so? Why is it dilly dallying in marshaling what it promised Nigerians so as to prove its outlandish claim of wining an election it very well knew it lost?
But then, many years of wielding irresponsible power has clearly weaned PDP of the power of good reasoning and logical thinking for if the party still reasons well, it will know that the present electoral system is a systematic process that involves releasing results at each polling booth, each electoral ward, each local council and eventually the state level, which strangely the PDP is battling against. If they are not robbed of the power of good thinking, it would have told itself the truth that it needs not 48 hours or perpetuity to get an accurate and verifiable result from Edo. Saying that results were changed at the state collation level is a silly excuse for a party that knows its onions for election results could be known few hours after each election just by a capable situation room collating the results from all the polling units. Results here are not the thoughtless forgeries the PDP bandied around at every election but the results vetted by INEC at each polling unit in a given electoral constituency. This was why the APC was able to track the results of the March 28 2015 presidential election while the PDP was still fabricating phantom results where it said it was leading by 25 states at a time the genie has already been let out of the bag.
So it is silly to say that election results were change at the state collation center when they have been announce at the booth, ward and local government collation centers. Because PDP knows it was lying to itself, as it is wont to do, it is not releasing any ‘authentic’ result on Edo because there is no such result. There is no other result different from what INEC released and that was merely an aggregate of the results from the polling units, wards and local council collation centers. The PDP should stop this irresponsible behavior because it is not a panacea for its debilitating fortunes. Though it is too late in the day but the PDP must reform its battered ethical content and start repairing its image. Such acts of irresponsibility as it displays in Edo can never help it. If it wants to adopt such short cuts to get back to power, there is every need to alert it that Nigerians are not dummies. Its present crush with irresponsible conducts as opposition politics will only deepen its woes and I can throw a bet on this.
Peter Claver Oparah
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com
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