APGA chieftain berates PDP over DSS involvement in election petitions

A CHIEFTAIN of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Dr. David Onuoha-Bourdex, has condemned the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), governors’ call for the withdrawal of the Directorate of State Security Services (DSS), from involvement in election petitions, saying that PDP should recognize the limit of opposition.

The PDP Governors Forum had after their inaugural meeting after the general election where the Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko, was elected as chairman, urged President Muhammadu Buhari, to ask the DSS to dissociate itself from election petition tribunals.

However, Onuoha-Bourdex, in a statement signed by him and made available to The Guardian, yesterday, described the stand of the PDP governors as ‘outrageous and obtuse,’ stressing that the PDP governors want the fraud that happened during the last election to be swept under the carpet.

Onuoha-Bourdex who contested the election for Abia North Senatorial seat, added that “as an injured party protesting the high scale electoral heist and perfidy bordering on the Abia North Senatorial district election at the tribunal, we decided to react to PDP governors’ position so that half-truth does not attain the status of truth.”

He argued that since election rigging represents a source of threat to national security, it would make for genuine national peace and stability if the DSS is brought in to help investigate election malpractices so as to get to the root of election rigging and ensure that those found guilty could be punished.

Part of the statement read: “Election rigging is a very fundamental threat to national security and stability, a secret police worth its salt should not fold its hands and stand aloof towards a potential threat to the country’s internal security. As such if the involvement of Nigeria’s secret police would help the country to find out how the expressed will of Nigerian voters were supplanted and subverted, why should PDP be apprehensive?

“We recall that in the past sixteen years, such clear violations of the civic rights of Nigerian citizens have always been swept under the carpet mainly because PDP controls the levers of the federal government. Their refrain is usually; let them go to court, knowing that they have the backing of the powers that be to suppress the facts.

“Now that another Pharaoh, who does not know Joseph, has come on the throne, why should the new wine continue to be served in old wineskins? Perhaps PDP does not fully understand what the ruling All Progressive s Congress, (APC) means by ‘Change’ or why Nigerians voted for a change in the way policies and programmes of government are implemented.”