The People’s Democratic Party, PDP Governors’ Forum has on Monday consolidated their firm support for e-transmission of votes ahead of the 2023 general elections in the country.
The forum in a communiqué issued at the end of its 11th meeting held in Bauchi on Monday says it identified with the “need for a free, fair and credible elections in the country and called on the National Assembly to entrench Electronic transmission of results of elections in the nation’s electoral jurisprudence.”
The forum called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to deploy appropriate technologies necessary to ensure that the votes of every Nigerian is counted and made to count.
“The meeting further called on the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), especially, the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF), Nigerian Communications Satellite Ltd (NIGCOMSAT), Telephone Companies (Telcos) and all relevant stakeholders to ensure that universal access and service of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are provided especially in rural, un-served and under-served areas of the country before the 2023 General elections”, the communiqué read in part.
The forum in the communiqué also rejects part of the proposed section of the electoral amendment bill which “foist on all political parties, one method of conducting primaries, that is, by DIRECT METHOD ONLY.”
“The Governors noted that the method is prone to massive rigging, as evidenced by a situation where President Buhari scored about 15 million votes in the 2018 APC Direct Primaries only to score 15 million votes from the entire country in the 2019 General Election. The Governors advised that political parties should be allowed to decide whether to use direct or indirect method of conducting primaries as part of internal democracy in political parties”, the forum insisted.
On revenue generation, the forum called on, “NNPC and other revenue-generating agencies of Government to strictly abide by the Constitution by remitting all their Revenue less cost of Production into the Federation Account as provided for by Section 162 of the Constitution.”
“The meeting condemned, once again, the use of underhand tactics to arm-twist some PDP Governors and other stakeholders to join the APC, a political party that has wrecked Nigeria’s economy, turned Nigeria into a killing field and has nothing to offer Nigerians but misery and bad governance.”
