APC is a den of illegality ― Falae

THE national chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief Olu Falae, on Thursday described the All Progressives Congress (APC) as a den of illegality, urging Nigerians to reject the party at the 2019 elections.

He said the rejection should start with the Lokoja/Kogi federal constituency bye-election scheduled for tomorrow (Saturday).

Speaking at the grand finale rally of the candidate of the SDP for the election, Ahmed Imam, held at Lokoja, the state capital, Falae also condemned the declaration of the seat of the former speaker of the Kogi state house of assembly vacant by the APC controlled assembly.

The former speaker recently defected to the SDP to contest the by-election occasioned by the death of the former majority leader of the house of representatives, Buba Jubril.

According to him, recent developments in the country had shown that the ruling party was worse than the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that it claimed to have solutions to.

He urged the people of Lokoja in particular and Kogi, in general, to demonstrate their support for the former speaker by voting against the APC on Saturday.

Falae noted that Imam fulfilled the prescribed conditions that are spelt out in the constitution before a lawmaker could defect from his party to another.

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Speaking on the declaration of the Lokoja I state constituency seat vacant, he said, “That is another evidence of illegality, arbitrariness and malice. The law says you can change party if your party is in crisis and factions have developed within the party. His party was APC but today we have APC and R-APC, two factions, the conditions for defection legitimately have been fulfilled, he exercised his right to leave a party in factions and joined SDP, so it is illegal, criminal and unconstitutional for the house of assembly to declare the seat vacant, we shall take them to court and the court will deal with them.

“I want to urge the people to turn the APC, that is the new party that all Nigerians are looking up to safe them from corruption, incompetence and anarchy. A government ruled for 15 years, they messed up, we all clamoured for change, APC and they are far worse than PDP, so we urge Nigerians to turn to SDP, a party that has a wonderful manifesto and leaders who are unimpeachable, so the people of Kogi should start on Saturday and the whole Nigerians will follow.

On the invasion of the national assembly by security agents, Falae said, “The security force interfering with the functioning of the legislature is committing an illegality a rape of constitution, those involved should be arrested and dealt with according to law because is a threat to our democracy”.