PDP to Mantu: We Didn’t Send You to Rig Elections

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has dismissed the advice by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to learn from former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ibrahim Mantu’s claims on how he rigged elections.

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement on Sunday, said Senator Mantu’s reported claims were personal to him and have nothing to do with the PDP, as the party has never directed any of its members to rig election on its behalf, at any point since its formation.

“Senator Mantu,” Ologbondiyan said, “spoke about his personal activities and tendencies in the elections where he participated. The PDP has never directed or had any pact with him to rig election on its behalf. Never!”

According to the statement, “Individuals run their elections on the platform of political parties once they emerge as candidates. In the PDP, candidates are issued with the party’s Code of Conduct containing the basic rules of electioneering engagements.

“There is nowhere in this rules of engagement where candidates or party members are directed to rig elections on behalf of the party. If any member’s conduct transgressed these basic rules of engagement, that individual did not act on behalf of the PDP, and as such the party cannot be vicariously held responsible.

“It will therefore be misplaced for anybody, including the APC, to surmise that Senator Mantu, in the said confession of rigging, acted on behalf of the PDP.

“After all, in 2007, Senator Mantu lost his own senatorial election. What, then, happened to his rigging machinery, if he could not deliver himself.

“We urge the APC to manage its manifest failures in party administration as well as its incompetent, lack-lustre and wobbling governance which has grounded the nation’s economy and brought hunger and starvation to our people.”