Atiku, PDP planning to infiltrate INEC to rig 2019 polls, says Buhari’s group

THE Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) said yesterday that it has unearthed plans by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar to infiltrate the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by sponsoring its supporters to work within the commission as electoral officers.

BMO also said the opposition was deploying massive resources to rig next month’s presidential election.

The organisation said in a statement issued by its chairman, Niyi Akinsiju and secretary, Cassidy Madueke, that the plans of the opposition “to subvert the will of the people”, is the recent recruitment of a former INEC Chairman known to have presided over the worse election in Nigeria’s recent political history.

The group said the rigging plot also involves spending huge sums of money on police personnel and election officials in many parts of the country. It added that the opposition was also plotting to infiltrate the electoral body with their supporters.

The group asked INEC to be vigilant and ensure that PDP supporters were not recruited as electoral officers.

“With their campaign daily losing steam, PDP has also resorted to accusing everyone directly or remotely connected to President Muhammadu Buhari of corruption; after realising that Nigerians are not buying any of their Dubai strategy of lies.

“Their leaders had been working on this plan for a while and had consciously been raising all sorts of allegations and attacking national institutions involved in the electoral process to divert attention from their devious agenda.

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“Part of the plot is to discredit INEC’s new election guidelines, which included simultaneous accreditation and voting, and which also barred collation officers from making or receiving calls on election day.

“This same style was successfully test-run in all bye-elections in recent months, including those won by PDP candidates, but the party did not see anything wrong with it until the commission insisted that it would be used during the next elections,” the BMO said.

BMO noted that PDP is also working on infiltrating INEC by embedding its supporters among ad-hoc electoral officials as part of its rigging plan.

It consequently advised the Commission to be cautious in its recruitment plan for the general election.

“We want to place Nigerians on notice that they should be at alert and not allow PDP elements at all levels to subvert the will of the electorate.

“There is also a need for the election management body to properly scrutinise ad-hoc staff to be recruited for Election Day duty as well as pay more than a passing attention to its officials in the run up to the February 16 election.

“This is because PDP, a party that is known for electoral manipulation, and which has a lot of dirty schemes in its kitty to rig the process in favour of its Presidential candidate, needs to be put under close surveillance,” they said.

They dismissed insinuations by the opposition that President Buhari and the APC to rig the election, saying the President has no reason to rig the Presidential election, saying any fear by the opposition was completely misplaced.