The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), yesterday, said the outcome of Kogi and Bayelsa governorship polls has destroyed the hope of Nigerians in democracy.
A statement by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, alleged the All Progressives Congress (APC) trampled on democracy during the polls.
Though the opposition party expressed regrets that votes no longer count under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, it said it remained strong and united in the face of all its experience in the Bayelsa and Kogi governorship elections conducted on Saturday.
Ologbondiyan said that the PDP would continue to fully exert itself in upholding the wishes and aspirations of Nigerians.
“Nigerians and the entire world watched in horror as the APC-led government trampled our democracy under foot with an utmost impunity that can only be obtainable in Hitler’s Germany and Samuel Doe’s Liberia, where the lives and rights of citizens meant nothing to suppressive power mongers.
“Citizens agonized as APC-controlled security forces aided armed hoodlums to invade polling centers, shoot and kill innocent citizens, cart away ballot boxes, stuffed them with already thumb printed ballot papers in favour of APC, after which results are allocated to the APC and handed over to a compromised Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to announce against the will of the people.
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“It is distressing that under the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC administration, votes no longer count; power and governance no longer derive from the people but from violence, manipulations and the barrel of the gun. Nigerians now ask; are we still in a democracy?
“With the outcome of the Kogi and Bayelsa governorship elections, Nigerians and the world have lost hope in our institutions of democracy and security system as presently constituted.
“They have completely lost hope in INEC under Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, which has shown itself to be a repressive tool in the hands of dictatorial forces.
“As a party, we condole with the families of our compatriots that were killed in Kogi and Bayelsa states and prayed that God grant their souls eternal rest.
NAN