The Ekiti state governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has blasted President Muhammadu Buhari for the role he has played in killing the legacy left behind by his immediate predecessor, Dr Goodluck Jonathan in organising credible elections in Nigeria.
Fayose said: “We thought that we have gone past this era of manipulated electoral process after the 2015 general elections, which brought the APC and President Buhari to power, but the Buhari administration has taken us back to the stone age by merging his party, APC with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the police, military and other security agencies.”
In a statement issued yesterday, by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, the governor said with what was witnessed in Rivers State on Saturday, ‘’it is clear that Nigeria is under siege and only prompt intervention by the international community can save democracy in the country from this imminent collapse.”
He continued: “It is sad that snatching of ballot boxes, hijacking of voting materials and electoral violence, which had become a thing of the past have now become part of our electoral process. It is even more worrisome that despite that votes are counted openly at the polling units, electorates are no longer sure of the results of elections until announcement by INEC, which has become an organ of the APC.”
Governor Fayose described President Buhari as a pretender, who has only paid lip service to the sustenance of democracy in the country, adding that “any president that looks the other way while the rights of his people to freely elect their leaders are being snatched at gunpoint by his own party men is not worthy of being associated with democracy.”
He reiterated his call to the United States of America President-Elect, Mr Donald Trump to focus his attention more on Nigeria, with a view to saving the country from disintegrating, saying; “God forbid, if Nigeria disintegrates, the entire continent of Africa will disintegrate.
“The order of the day in Nigeria now is disobedience to court orders, abuse of human rights, extra-judicial killings and mass burial of innocent Nigerians killed by the Army. The reality we must all face is that should all these be allowed to continue, Nigeria faces imminent danger and the international community must not allow the country to get to that level of total collapse before it begins to call President Buhari and his APC to order.”