Stakeholders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Oyo State have alerted the chairman of the party’s National Caretaker Committee, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, over plot by some individuals in the state’s chapter of the party to submit fake congress results for the state, despite the fact that congresses have not been held, warning the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the judiciary not to “support such fraud.”
This was just as they congratulated Makarfi over the pronouncement of a Port Harcourt Federal High Court, which affirmed that his committee was duly appointed, noting that “the pronouncement has further rekindled the common man’s hope that Nigeria’s judiciary can be trusted and relied upon to serve the sacred cause of justice.”
The stakeholders, in a letter addressed to Makarfi and signed by one of its chieftains, Alabi Caleb Olatunji, a copy of which was obtained by the Nigerian Tribune, said the stakeholders found it necessary to alert the caretaker committee about the activities of some people “who have concluded plans, to submit fake/conjured results for 2016 congresses that were never held in Oyo State,” saying that a similar act in 2012 had resulted in the party’s woeful performance in the last general election.
They pointed out that to avert a similar occurrence in the future, all stakeholders in the party had, with the consent of the PDP’s national secretariat, begun a move to reconcile all aggrieved party members and those who left the PDP to join other political parties, but could not conclude the reconciliation effort in time for all parties to participate in the 2016 ward, local government and state congresses held in April 2016.
The letter stated that the congresses were postponed indefinitely in the state with the postponement said to have been unanimously endorsed and approved by all stakeholders in the state, and formally communicated to the national secretariat, noting, however, that a few members of the party had seized on that postponement to hatch a plot to submit fake results.
“Information reaching us further revealed that apart from making moves to forge documents and to get such fraudulent information into the records of the party at the national level (an effort that have thus far proved futile and which we hope will remain so), they are also toying with the idea of filing cases at the High Court to fraudulently obtain a judgment by illegally procuring counsel for the PDP, INEC and some other statutory bodies who will be paid to simply endorse their fraudulent results of congress(es) in respect of Oyo State,” the letter read in part.
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