"Mantu Never Rigged Elections For Us" - PDP Replies APC

THE Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has dismissed claims that a Senator rigged election on behalf of it.

The opposition party stated this on Sunday, while reacting to the request by the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) on Saturday urging it to confess its sins against Nigerians like the lawmaker did.

Former senate president, Ibrahim Mantu, had in an interview on Channels Television, revealed that he rigged elections for the PDP.

In response, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement on said Mr Mantu’s reported claims are personal to him and has nothing to do with the PDP.

Ologbondiyan said the party has never directed any of its members to rig election on its behalf at any point 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!

“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,” the statement said.