'Jega finished PDP' - Party Chieftain says

A Chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Delta State, Olorogun John Oguma, has said rubbished the All Progressives Congress’ (APC) victory in the March 28 and April 11 general elections, noting the party schemed the victory two years before the polls.

In a recent interview with select journalists, Oguma said PDP plotted its own doom with incessant bickering, while APC was busy rigging the elections.

He said, “We in PDP abandoned ‘we’ and we were discussing ‘I’ and that is what has brought us now to this level. It is a bitter lesson that we must have to learn from and we are going to start again from the scratch.

“Because we were busy fighting ourselves, APC was busy rigging the election two years back. This election was actually rigged two years back because we were busy fighting ourselves; this governor is not good, that governor is bad; so it is a bitter lesson to our leaders.”

Explaining the rigging, the PDP Chief said the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, acted out APC's script to rig the elections.

“The taste of the pudding is in its eating. You cannot tell me that if this arrangement were not in place about two years back, why did Jega refuse to use card reader even for one state? If it were not a script he followed; he should have tested the card reader in the Ekiti or Osun governorship elections before going out to use it in 36 states and the FCT.

“As I am concerned, the card reader was a bigger issue than the voting point. In the electoral act, the card reader is not there, but he forced Nigerians to accept it because he knew what he planned.

On APC’s ‘Change’ manifesto, Oguma said it is all a sham.

“Like I keep telling people, change is not a manifesto. APC has no manifesto; they only just wiped up sentiments, because PDP had been in government for 16 years and then we played into their hands. You know the rich man has more enemies in society than the poor man; that is why they succeeded in whipping up sentiments. They don’t have a manifesto; they only just said they want change.

“Nigeria as a country only has one major source of income which is oil. Today, the Americans are fighting on how the oil price can come down. It is affecting all the oil exporting countries but APC is saying it was because Jonathan did not govern well that the oil price came down and you know that 80% of Nigerians are unlettered; even those of them who claim to be graduates don’t read newspapers", he said.