By Umar Ardo, Ph.D
The last Saturday’s so-called governorship and House of Assembly election in Adamawa was not an election – it was simply a rigging exercise conducted by APC and PDP; supervised by INEC, and guarded and abetted by security agencies.
SDP didn’t involve itself in any way or form in the election malpractices, including vote buying. In SDP, we never descended to such primitive level! We were civilized in our politics – we visited each and every LGA in the state; had consultative meetings with all key elements of society – traditional rulers, religious leaders, women, youth and elders groups, with farmers, herders, traders, fishers and butchers associations, students, civil servants, labour unions, the academia, business groups and pensioners; we met with ethnic nationalities, civil society groups, etc; we held public rallies and town hall meetings, conducted house-to-house consultations; we organized conferences, seminars and symposiums – all in trying to find and define issues and proffer solutions to societal problems. We came up with convincing messages and clear manifesto that resonated well with our people.
And in all the meetings and from all their fallouts, we extracted commitments of support from these key elements of society – only on Election Day for PDP and APC to turn the entire exercise into either market places where votes were openly bided for or war zones where voters were intimidated, harassed and cajoled into giving their votes; or simply where votes were allocated to those who monopolized the agents of coercion. Therefore, neither Gov. Fintiri nor Sen. Binani has any moral high ground to accuse one another of electoral misdeeds. Both of them are culpable as they literally bought and/or stole virtually all the votes they got! In fact, the so-called elections in the entire 21 LGAs must not just have to be reviewed but canceled!! The evidences of vote buying, vote riggings and vote allocations on the sides of both the PDP and APC are indeed damning!
There was therefore no election in Adamawa state on March 18th as people never voted their conscience. Either the votes were bought, intimidated or, as Binani herself vowed to do, stolen. But whatever it is, we’ll employ science and technology to establish the truth of the election. I am honestly not bothered with what they did, except that I am worried Nigeria is descending into a state of anarchy where lawful and peaceful change of power is becoming more and more impossible to attain.
Umar Ardo, Ph.D
(Adamawa State SDP Governorship Candidate)
