Peoples Democratic Party has commended Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai for his commitment towards ensuring free and fair election through the massive procurement of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) in last Saturday’s local government election.
It, however, expressed disapproval at the outcome of the election which it said made nonsense of the governor’s sincerity.
Also, the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP) said the Kaduna State Independent Election Commission (KADSIECOM) promised to conduct free, fair and credible election using EVM which was introduced and used in previous election (2018) by the commission.
It said while political parties, their candidates and supporters trusted and believed the words of the commission officials to conduct free, fair and credible election, “unfortunately, the conduct and outcomes of the Saturday (4th /9/2021) election were marred by fraud, inadequacies and also characterized by apparent malfunctions and outright failures of the electronic voting machine (EVM) to function at the polling units, which render the result of the councillorship and chairmanship election to become inconclusive in most of the local government.
The PDP in its press conference addressed by the chairman, Felix Hassan Hyat, said, “We emphatically condemn the high incidence of violence, which manifested in the molestation of our agents and party stalwarts, in which they were beaten, molested and even driven away from their duty post during the currency of the electoral process.
“It is all the more worrisome to note that, all of these took place right in the presence of security agents who chose to look the other way and thus shirked their responsibility of maintaining peace and tranquility in the society, of particular note is that incidence of this nature preponderantly took place in Sanga Local Government where soldiers were deployed by some top functionaries of government, unlawfully against public interest and good to sabotage the electoral process.”