Ondo: Why We Can’t Congratulate APC Now, PDP Replies Mai Buni

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that it cannot congratulate the All Progressives Congress (APC) over its victory in the Ondo State gubernatorial election as demanded by National Caretaker Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Governor Mai Mala Buni because the process that produced the candidate is faulty and contentious.

Addressing a press conference in Abuja on Monday, Kola Ologbondiyan, National Publicity Secretary, reminded the Yobe State governor that the emergence of the APC caretaker committee, which oversaw the nomination of the candidate, is the subject of ongoing litigation.

The main opposition party, therefore, admonished the party boss not to expect the PDP to legitimize the caretaker committee by endorsing the election.

Ologbondiyan said: “The attention of the 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.

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“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.”

The PDP spokesman also alleged that money was sourced by the APC from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to fund the Ondo state election.

He added: “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 dollars, from our nation oil resources to fund vote-buying in the Ondo election.

“Instead of begging the PDP for a 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 the 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.”

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE