The Director of Media for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Organisation, Femi Fani-Kayode, says the election postponement was a painful news for the party, but commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for taking the right step.
Addressing reporters in Abuja on Sunday, Mr Fani-Kayode said the extra six weeks provided by the shift in election date would enable the commission solve some of the challenges still confronting the commission.
“It was very clear to us that there were issues and those issues have not been fully addressed and one of the them is the Permanent Voter Cards (PVC) issue.
“We listed some of them in the text here.
“There were all kinds of issues and clearly, the INEC still has quite a lot to do to get its house in order to ensure that it can conduct a free and fair election on that day,” Mr Fani-Kayode.
‘Wide-reaching Consultations’
The campaign spokesman said that the PVCs issues and the security challenges in the north-eastern part of the oil rich nation needed to be resolved before the elections.
“When you marry the PVC issues to the security concerns that our security agencies have, to postpone the election by six weeks was the right and proper thing to do.
“Even though it is painful for all of us, we wanted to go on February 14. It would have been a day of love and a day of voting for Goodluck Jonathan. Unfortunately we have been denied that ,” he said.
Mr Fani-Kayode further said that the campaign office and the party was ready to continue with its campaign and would also help in increasing advocacy on the collection of PVCs.
Addressing reporters on Saturday, the INEC chairman, professor Attahiru Jega, said that the election was postponed after ‘wide-reaching consultations’.
Professor Jega said that security operatives had advised the commission to postpone the election for six weeks, as they could not guaranty the security of lives and property in the volatile north-east during the elections.
The leading opposition party, the All Progressives Congress, had accused the PDP administration of coercing the INEC into postponing the election.
However, a spokesman for President Goodluck Jonathan, Dr Doyin Okupe, said the government had no right to force the electoral body to change the date of the election, addressing insinuations that the presidency was pushing for the postponement of the elections.
“The Federal Government is not exerting pressure on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to shift the election dates,” he said.
According to him, the government was only asking the electoral umpire to ensure that all eligible voters got their Permanent Voters Cards (PVC) before the election.
Dr. Okupe said that the President could not in good conscience endorse an electoral arrangement where people from a section of the country would be excluded from the electoral process due to no fault of theirs or by virtue of just being unfortunate residents of an area under siege of terrorism.
