The All Progressives Congress (APC) has described the purported plan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to boycott the supplementary election in Kogi West senatorial district as ‘a silly joke’.
APC’s National Publicity Secretary, Lanre Issa-Onilu, said this in a statement on Sunday ahead of the November 30 date fixed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct the poll.
“Why should the supplementary election be cancelled as being demanded by the PDP? Is it because the PDP has already lost the election?” it questioned.
The party insisted that the PDP candidate, Senator Dino Melaye, did not win the February 23 poll and that was affirmed by the Court of Appeal.
It added that the electorate in the senatorial district resisted and frustrated the purported plan to rig the November 16 rerun election.U
APC stressed that no level of propaganda would change the fact that the supplementary election would hold on November 30 while the opposition party threatened to boycott the poll.
“Who is fooling who? Nobody is fooled by the PDP’s statement boycotting the supplementary election. The All Progressives Congress (APC) will not drop its guard in our quest to get a clear majority of the remaining votes in the affected units,” it said.
In a swift reaction, Senator Melaye denied and faulted the claims that the PDP planned to boycott the election.
He insisted that he won the November 16 election, saying “Smart Adeyemi, in his good conscience, knows that I won that election.”
The embattled lawmaker described the APC’s statement as a misrepresentation of the fact presented by the spokesperson for the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan.
According to him, Ologbondiyan never said the PDP will boycott that election but that is the imagination of the APC
Melaye explained, “He (Ologbondiyan) said the party rejects the results of that election and the figures that are giving birth to the supplementary elections.
“The PDP is a people’s party, the PDP is a party that respects the constitutionalism of democracy and will never shy away from political participation and elections, and the PDP will never say they are boycotting and election, although we all know that they are not credible.
“Those figures that you see there are all concocted figures,” he added.
