The Coalition of United Political Parties on Monday raised the alarm that Nigeria was working towards a repeat of the 1983 electoral violence with the way results of governorship elections were allegedly being manipulated in some states.
The coalition’s national spokesman, Imo Ugochinyere, said this in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja as governorship elections in some states were declared inconclusive.
Ugochinyere alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari and other chieftains of the ruling All Progresives Congress were using security agents to subvert the will of the people in the affected states.
He said the targets of the manipulations were states where opposition Peoples Democratic Party had already won.
Ugochinyere called on the people of the affected states to mobilise like the people of Ondo State did in 1983 and protect their votes.
He said, “The CUPP raises the alarm that President Buhari and his APC chieftains, working with military officers and few Independent National Electoral Commission’s officers, are pushing Nigeria into a repeat of 1983 bloody electoral crisis/violence/uprising with the ongoing cancellations and tampering with some local governments’ results in states where opposition PDP has won majority votes.
“The states include Kano, Rivers, Bauchi, Adamawa, Imo and Sokoto States.
“This is to create room for a re-run elections to use their well known rigging antics.
“We therefore call on the people of these states — Imo, Kano, Rivers, Adamawa, Sokoto and Bauchi — to act like the people of Ondo in the 1983 elections and mobilise to their state headquarters of INEC for the defence of the electoral will of their people.
“They should resist any undemocratic force, including armed men, trying to manipulate results in these states that the APC has lost.”