The Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP, has described as an act of desperation President Muhammadu Buhari’s refusal to sign the Electoral Amendment Bill.
The group lamented that Buhari never made any suggestions or proposals to the
National Assembly for the improvement of the electoral process “but kept delaying and indulging in unnecessary hide and seek until this last minute.”
It accused the President of trying to plunge the country into the worst electoral crisis it has ever seen.
A release signed by the Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, 1st National Spokesman, CUPP, said: “President Buhari by all indications is willing to plunge Nigeria into electoral crisis worse than those that twice directly led to the collapse of democracy after the 1963 and 1983 general elections.”
The full text of the release read:
News has reached the Nigerian opposition (Coalition of United Political Parties -CUPP) confirming the withholding of assent to the 2018 Electoral Amendment Bill by President Muhammadu Buhari.
We are informed that the Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate) Sen. Ita Enang could not even summon courage to face journalists and disclose the reasons why a jittery President afraid of a devastating electoral defeat yet desperate to cling on to power declined assent to the Bill.
A President who knows fully well that he did not perform should not be surprised and jittery that all security reports he is receiving on the elections from the security agencies indicate that he will suffer unprecedented electoral defeat in the hands of the consensus opposition candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as Nigerians have rejected his failures and rudderless government.
President Buhari has expectedly failed again to take advantage of the rare opportunity of the Electoral Amendment to write his name in gold as the President that signed the laws that guaranteed electoral credibility in Nigeria. But yet again, as usual of him, he failed to rise to the occasion, being blinded by ambition and the love of the perks of office.
It is an act of clear desperation that the President had shown. For each of the four times the Electoral Amendment Bill was presented to him for assent, he waited until the last day of his constitutionally allowed 30 days. Nigerians should also be reminded that throughout the amendment process, President Buhari never made any suggestions or proposals to the
National Assembly for the improvement of our electoral process but kept delaying and indulging in unnecessary hide and seek until this last minute.
Rather, the President is willing to allow Nigeria witness her most
violent elections when he had opportunity to sign the law which
guarantees the freest and most credible elections in Nigeria’s history.
The entire plan of the APC as we had revealed in earlier communications to the media is how to steal the mandate of the people to perpetuate a failed government in power.
However to checkmate a failed regime from this plot to steal the mandate of the Nigerian people in the February 2019 Presidential elections, the opposition will in the coming days unveil the neutralization strategy the Opposition Code 20. This Code is as enshrined in Section 20 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act which allows citizens to perform policing duties of arrest. The Section provides that “a private person may arrest a suspect in Nigeria who in his presence commits an offence or whom he reasonably suspects of having committed an offence for which
the Police is entitled to arrest without a warrant.” This Code is the effective counter measure to the stealing and rigging plot of the APC and President Buhari.
Nigerians have had enough of the Buhari misfortune and are resolved on consigning it to history where generations shall be taught on the kind of persons not to be elected President in any country ever again.
President Buhari by all indications is willing to plunge Nigeria into electoral crisis worse than those that twice directly led to the
collapse of democracy after the 1963 and 1983 general elections.
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It is unfortunate that this is just the next election after a sitting
President declared that his ambition is not worth the life of any
Nigerian and willingly conceded defeat even before the conclusion of counting of ballots.
CUPP hereby calls on the INEC Chairman to stand firm and be counted among the Patriots and heroes of our country by resisting all attempts to rig the 2019 general elections by reintroducing the incident forms and pre-loading the Card reader machines with the details already generated through the controversial cash-for-vote/Tradermoni policy supervised by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
The INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu must insist on implementing all the innovations already successfully test run in the Ekiti and Osun elections which were only devalued by the involvement and interference of the Police and other security agencies in the electoral process. INEC is the only institution of State yet to collapse and campaign and fully declare allegiance to the ruling Party. The Police and indeed all other security agencies are now fully working for the reelection of President Buhari in exchange for monetary benefits of the heads of these agencies.
We therefore call on all PVC bearing Nigerians to vote out all APC
candidates at all levels where their members in the National Assembly fail to join other patriotic Federal lawmakers to override the veto of the President in the coming days.