Mantu never rigged elections for us, says PDP

Olusola Fabiyi , Abuja

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

The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement in Abuja on Sunday, said  Mantu’s reported claims was personal to him and had nothing to do with the PDP, as the party had never directed any of its members to rig election on its behalf since its formation.

“Senator Mantu 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!,” Ologbondiyan said.

Mantu had claimed that  he rigged elections for the PDP before, but said that he had turned a new leaf.

Ologbondiyan, however, said that individuals run their elections on the platform of political parties once they emerged as candidates.

In the PDP, he said candidates were issued with the party’s Code of Conduct containing the basic rules of electioneering engagements.

Ologbondiyan said, “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?”

He urged the APC to manage its alleged manifest failures in party administration as well as its “incompetent, lacklustre and wobbling governance which has grounded the nation’s economy and brought hunger and starvation to our people.”

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