The National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of informing the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) about its plan to postpone Saturday’s presidential elections prior to the postponement.

Speaking on Monday during the party’s caucus meeting held at its headquarters in Abuja, Oshiomhole said the recent utterances of the PDP against the electoral umpire were mere attempts aimed at erasing any suspicions.

He said the APC would continue with its campaigns until Thursday due to the uncertainties and voter apathy created by the last minute rescheduling of the polls, stressing that the party was not in support of staggered elections.

His words: “INEC has postponed the elections without giving convincing reasons. Mr. President, if we as party leaders and our people, as voters are shocked as they have expressed on electronic media and in various conversations, in various social media and even Mama Put, how you felt, the pain in your heart at the shock and disappointment.. . .

“Mr. President, I had the opportunity along with party leaders of the other political parties to attend what was meant to be a briefing and for INEC to share with us what is that which went wrong such that they had to cancel an election with only five and a half hours before it was due to commence.

“Because they announced at 2.30 am and polling was supposed to have began at 8 am. That is barely five and a half hours. The more I listened to the explanation from the INEC Chairman, the more disgusted I was.

“But if it’s just about disgust, I can manage my feelings. It raises my suspicion about who is behind this agenda. I hate to discuss hidden agenda. When people talk about a hidden agenda, I said I prefer to discuss an open agenda.

“When hidden agenda come to the surface, we will discuss it but Mr. President, it will be a huge security risk to ignore all the speculations that have surrounded INEC’s sudden, unjustified postponement of the election.

“Because Mr. President this date, 16th of February was fixed. INEC on their own rolled out this timetable about two and a half years ago on their own. All we were expected to do was to comply.

“It was not imposed on them, it was not suggested to them. It was their own voluntary decision. And it is difficult to accept that for all of those period, INEC did not know what ought to be where and at what time in order to guarantee free and fair election.

“So the more explanations INEC Chairman gave, the more questions that were left unanswered.

“Number one, INEC talked about the huge population of Nigeria, that did not develop in 2015 and for me that was provocative. As a professor, he ought to have known not only the population of Nigeria, he ought to have known that even between the last press conference and today, more Nigerians have been born and some have taken off.

“Number two, he talked about the huge challenges in managing elections such as this in Nigeria, I said rubbish. From 1999 even the military conducted an election that ushered in President Olusegun Obasanjo.

“There were lessons to learn from that.in 2003, we conducted election. Of course many will say it was characterized by rigging but an election nonetheless. In 2007, we did another election. It was massively compromised.

“And the winner of that election had the courage to admit that the process that produced him was not good enough. Thereafter, there was an attempt to reform the electoral process.

“And by 2105, another election was conducted. It wasn’t the best in the world but it represented a substantial improvement over the 2011 election. I talk about substantial improvement because our brother from Rivers realized that their own professor could not rig his own result sheet because they had over-manipulated it.

“But because God had decreed and affirmed that you (Buhari) shall be the winner, all of those imperfections were not enough by themselves to change the outcome which is why we are here

“So one would have expected that nineteen down the road, INEC leadership had the opportunity to study and to improve on the performance of its predecessor but as it turned out, this is not the case.

“Mr. President, as we speak, we have questions that we want INEC to answer to because for an election to be free, fair and credible, the man with the key responsibility in this institution is INEC.

“Mr. President, we have complained to INEC for them to reflect on the need to move top officers who have stayed too long in particular locations as to become part and parcel of the establishment in those locations and therefore may not be able to conduct free and fair elections.

“We have pointed out some Resident Electoral Commissioners who have become so comfortable with their new residences that are in bed with the state authorities in their respective states.

“In the past when issues like these are raised and particularly where they can be proven, INEC leadership has the mechanism to review and make changes but this INEC, the more you complain about a compromised officer, the more they are determined to keep that official.

“I will give one example. An officer in the South-South in a training programme chose to use the Governor’ Special Assistant to superintendent over the training process. How can our bothers in Akwa Ibom State have confidence when the process, the recruitment, the training, the deployment of the ad hoc staff is done between the INEC REC and the government of Akwa Ibom State.

“What we are expected to do as a people is to point out anything that we think will be unhelpful and respectfully draw the attention of the appropriate authorities. As we speak, that problem persists.

“Number three, from all we have now known, I can put my hand on the Holy Qu’ran that the INEC leadership knew that they were going to postpone the election. They shared this information with the Peoples Democratic Party and advised them not to waste their resources while pretending to us that they were on top of the situation.

“Anytime we raised an observation, they are on top of the situation. Actually as we now know, they were on top of this arrangement that was meant to create confusion across the country.

“I think INEC deserves to make an explanation to us not because we are the governing party but because we are a major player. Whatever information INEC conveyed to PDP, they ought to have conveyed to us.”