The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) for the 2023 governorship election in Enugu State, Frank Nweke Junior has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu State of planning to compromise INEC officials and adhoc staff to bypass the use of BVAS and generally disrupt the governorship and house of assembly elections in the state.
He claimed that the ruling party in the state was planning to use thugs to cause mayhem, with a view to dispersing voters at polling units in order to have opportunity to rig the elections and subvert the will of the people to achieve victory at all costs.
Nweke said since suffering massive losses across the state on February 25, the PDP has held series of meetings at various locations to perfect their nefarious plans to ensure that they disrupt the electoral process, compromise INEC staff and deploy maximum violence.
The APGA flagbearer alleged that a source that attended the meetings reported that they lamented that they were falsely led into believing that BVAS was impregnable by INEC and that manual voting was impossible.
“According to them, events in Port Harcourt and some parts of the country had demonstrated otherwise; and that they must now take advantage of it by deploying sums of money to compromise INEC staff, buy votes and cause maximum violence to scare voters who do not vote for them and intimidate others into voting for them against their will.
“They have therefore resolved to ‘buy’ INEC staff to sabotage the elections as described above, and also to specifically ensure that the original result sheets are neither brought to the polling units nor the ward and local government collation centres. Since the IReV malfunctioned last Saturday, they reasoned that they would calmly write new results when the representatives of other political parties disperse at various collation centres in the belief that results had been announced.”
The former minister of Information also used the opportunity to dismiss rumours making the rounds that he stepped down for the PDP governorship candidate, Peter Mbah.
He restated that he remains a strong supporter of Peter Obi, adding that he is also ‘obidient.’
But, the campaign council of the Enugu State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has dismissed the allegations of planned rigging of the March 11 governorship and State House of Assembly elections in the state leveled against it, saying “it is as a disingenuous effort at preemptive excuses for his expected abysmal outing in the election.”
A statement issued by the spokesman of the PDP Campaign Council, Nana Ogbodo said Nweke’s impact on the March 11 polls ends with making preposterous conjectures, adding that Nweke had only succeeded in making the ballot papers longer than necessary.
