Mantu decries nullification of PDP election results - Says ‘it’s an indictment on PDP’

Olayinka Olukoya, Abeokuta - 29.02.2008

Former Deputy Senate President, Alhaji Ibrahim Mantu, has said that the nullification of electoral victories of members of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) in the last general elections was an indictment on the party.

Mantu, who was the chairman of the party’s Congress Monitoring Committee in Ogun State, said this on Thursday in Abeokuta while delivering his address at the Moshood Abiola Stadium, venue of the party’s state congress.

According to him, the voiding of the elections of PDP members was not necessarily based on the fact that such elections were rigged, but because the elections were flawed by internal processes.

He said there was the need for the party leadership to have a re-think on the way it handled some crucial matters, especially the imposition of candidates against the members’ wish at party elections.

He said “it remains a serious indictment on our party that today, the courts are voiding the victories of our party members at the last general election, not necessarily because of election rigging, but because the internal processes that threw up such persons for election were flawed as such processes have been seen by the courts as inconsistent with the party’s own constitution in the cases involved.”

Mantu noted that the decisions of the court remained a victory for the nation’s democracy and urged leaders of the party to change their political behaviors so that the party would continue to be acceptable to the people.

He said the negative perception Nigerians in particular and the world in general had about the party had not aided the nation’s desire to become one of the 20 strongest economies in the world by the year 2020.