The Peoples Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has again expressed fears that the presidency is out to emasculate institutions of democracy, especially the judiciary in its desperation to subvert and overturn the expressed will of Nigerians in the various election matters across the country.
Raising fresh concerns Thursday at a press briefing in Abuja, the acting national chairman of the party, Amb. Umar Illiya Damagum, expressed serious concerns over what he called underhanded design by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to cripple democracy, overthrow the democratic rights of Nigerians, suppress the Rule of Law and turn the nation to a fiefdom run by cabals.
The party which had earlier alerted the nation against any form of totalitarianism alleged that the ruling APC was on the verge of using certain hugely compromised Electoral Petition Courts to snatch elections clearly won by the PDP and award them to the defeated candidates of the APC who were rejected by the people at the polls in most states across the country.
Damagum’s statement reads: “This sinister agenda tailored towards a systemic emasculation of the opposition and foisting of an oppressive one-party system is evident in the conduct and outcome of certain election petitions in Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, Nasarawa, Delta, Ogun and other states of the nation where the election petition and appeal panels were used to rob the PDP of victory won at the polls.
“Also of serious concern is the continuing stay of the patently bias Plateau State Election Appeal Court Panel sitting in Abuja despite widespread demands by the people of Plateau state and the PDP for its immediate disbandment having regards to its varying and contradictory judgments against the PDP, which are also in conflict with the provisions of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), the Electoral Act, 2022, INEC’s guidelines and regulations for elections.
“You will recall that on Wednesday, November 1, 2023, our party addressed a press conference in which we alerted Nigerians of the dangerous pattern of conflicting judicial pronouncements by the Plateau State Election Appeal Court Panel to decimate and alter the expressed will of the people of Plateau state in the 2023 National Assembly elections,” he said.
