The South-west elder’s caucus of Nigeria’s main opposition, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has insisted that the 2019 general election result was manipulated, while the election was characterised by flaws, sabotage, treachery and outright banditry, even as it request all elders, patriots and people of goodwill across the land to speak out with courage about the perceived wrong and imbalances in the nation’s polity.
In a communiqué presented to journalists on behalf of the members of the forum by its spokesman, Uthman Shodipe Dosunmu, on Tuesday, stated that the country deserved peace, harmony, equity and a strengthened bond of brotherhood that would galvanise the nation’s toward greater development and prosperity.
The forum noted that it had resolved that the present electoral process wherein result sheets would be physically carried across the nation were absolutely primitive and apparently susceptible to all kinds of distortions.
The meeting, which had in attendance, Bode George, former PDP deputy National Chairman, Ebenezer Babatope, a member of the Board of Trustees (BoT) Okanlawon Soboyede, Senator Kofo Bucknor-Akerele, Elder Wole Oyelese, Remi Akintoye, Joju Fadairo, Tunji Shelle, Adegbola Dominic, and several other elders and leaders of the party in the region.
The elders’ caucus agreed that the leadership of the party should return to the first principle of fairness, equity and justice.
“The apparent distortion of elections in Yobe, Borno, Rivers, Lagos, Adamawa, Kano and many other states had really diminished the purity of a fledgling democratic nation,” the elders said.
The PDP elders further maintained that the Nigerian union had crossed a crucial threshold in the continuous struggle for a common identity and national wholeness, pointing out that the party would never tolerate interference of outsiders in the affairs of South West region of the country.
