• Breaks alliance with Labour Party
By Chinelo Obogo
Lagos State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said it would contest results of the recent local government elections.
Chairman of the party, Moshood Salvador, accused the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC) of not keeping to its promise to conduct a free and fair election.
He alleged that ballot boxes were not accurately counted. He added that where some were counted, they were taken to collation centres where other party agents were not allowed to enter except agents of All Progressives Congress (APC).
“It was at the collation centres that the results were doctored and votes allocated to political parties for the returning officers to declare,” he alleged.
He also berated the House of Assembly for passing an amendment of LASIEC Act three days to the elections, a move he said was meant to favour the APC.
“I want to remind everyone of the emergency LASIEC Law that was sponsored by the state government, which was presented, read on the floor of the Assembly, went through the first, second and third reading, passed and also signed into law by the governor on the same day. All these happened just three days to the election.
“There are statuary processes in lawmaking and the failure to go through these statuary processes will invalidate the laws. There was no publication of the laws in three national newspapers for the statutary number of days and there was no public hearing on the laws before reading.
“I can assure you that such laws cannot be accepted anywhere in the world. Therefore, all APC acclaimed winners are not validly elected since there was no primaries at various constituencies and the new laws to protect them were not validly made.
“We must get LASIEC to return all the political parties that had the second highest votes in the election because they are the only validly elected candidates.”
The state chairman also said the alliance the PDP made with the Labour Party (LP) for the purpose of the council polls had been dissolved.
He said the decision to make an alliance with the LP was reached due to the national leadership crisis so that party members who were loyal to the Ahmed Markarfi’s faction could get a platform on which they could contest.
“As explained in the past, there was an agreement between the Makarfi PDP’s faction and the other political parties for the purpose of the election. Now that the election has come and gone, the alliance has been dissolved,” he said.