Delta State People’s Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, Chief Sunny Onuesoke, has condemned the hasty congratulatory messages to President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari over the 2019 Presidential election by the United Kingdom and the United States and other countries as too hasty.
Speaking to a group of journalists at the weekend, Onuesoke said it was shocking to the core the way foreign countries hastily accepted the result despite reports of widespread violence, voters suppression, vote-buying, ballot boxes snatching and copious underage voting in the North.
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He stated that he expected the people, who wrote the foreign observers’ reports, to do their jobs uncompromisingly and point out many of the complaints they received and put them forward for further investigation, but the reverse was the case.
“But they chose to betray the Nigerians who trusted them to be objective and protective umpires. And they wound up giving the world a completely false impression that President Muhammadu Buhari won fair and square.
“For example, reports from one of the rural communities revealed that soldiers disenfranchised 16, 000 people, by confiscating election materials in four wards.
“Meanwhile, in Bonny Island, no voting at all took place last Saturday because a local APC grandee, fearing defeat, intimidated the electorate with help from security personnel.
“What about Lagos, incidents of destroying ballot papers in opposition base. Or do we talk of the killings in Rivers State and disfranchising of voters by military men in Southern states,” he queried.
Onuesoke said it was amazing that foreigners chose to so cruelly abandon Buhari’s main rival, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and his millions of supporters, adding that to be fair, some foreign observers meant well and are not happy about the sanitised reports that were pushed out by their superiors, while other observers simply saw nothing wrong in it.
“Some people said the foreigners just wanted to safeguard their economic interests by avoiding crisis…and that they have decided that the safest way forward was to stick with a status quo that is far from ideal, but stable compared to the chaos that may descend if Buhari’s “victory” is seriously challenged,” he revealed.
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