Ondo Poll: PDP Replies Mala Buni On Why It Hasn’t Congratulated APC

…Opposition Says It Will State Stance In Due Course

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has replied the All Progressives Congress (APC) over its appeal that the PDP should congratulate the ruling party on the outcome of the Saturday governorship election in the Ondo State.

PDP said it is “indeed ludicrous and completely absurd,” that the APC Caretaker Chairman and Yobe State Governor, Mai Mala Buni, would beg for an endorsement of the election.

The party said this was despite the awareness that the “internal mechanism that produced his party’s candidate, as presided over by him, was faulty.”

Buni had earlier on Monday, appealed to the PDP and other political parties to congratulate the APC, whose candidate, Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, won the Ondo state governorship election for a second term in office.

PDP’s candidate in the election, Eyitayo Jegede, came second.

Buni had said: “It is said, one good turn deserves another, and just like we congratulated PDP in the Edo election, we look forward to seeing PDP and the other political parties extend similar gestures to us in the spirit of good sportsmanship. By so doing, we will make elections in Nigeria healthier and attractive, rather than making elections a do or die affair.”

But in a statement issued on Monday evening by its Spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP said it would make its official position on the outcome of the Ondo election known in due course.

Ologbondiyan also asked President Muhammadu Buhari to take steps that would accelerate the amendment of the Electoral Act.

According to him, this was stalled following his failure to sign the Act amended by the National Assembly in 2019.

He said: “While our party will, in due course, make its official position on the outcome of the Ondo election known, the PDP urges President Muhammodu Buhari to take steps that will accelerate the amendment of the Electoral Act, which was stalled following his failure to sign the amended Act of the National Assembly in 2019.”

The PDP spokesman also took a dig at Buni: “Nigerians already knows that the emergence of Governor Mai Buni in the national leadership of his party is a subject of litigation and as such his nomination of any candidate for the election is seen, even among his party members, as a nullity until the court says otherwise.

“It will therefore be pathetic for Governor Mai Buni to attempt to use the PDP to build something on the nothingness of his position in his party. The PDP is too structured as a party to be used by anybody, under any guise, in that regard.

“Perhaps, Governor Buni is not aware that information available in the public space and to the PDP showed that a very top-level management official of the NNPC, through a northwest governor elected on the platform of the APC, diverted huge amounts of money, in dollar, from our nation oil resources to fund vote buying in the Ondo election.

“Instead of begging the PDP for congratulatory message, Governor Buni should rather speak to this disturbing stealing of oil money to fund his party’s vote buying at the expense of Nigerians who are bearing the brunt of increase in the pump price of fuel and corruption in the oil sector under the APC.”