PDP accuses Buhari of planning to extent police boss's tenure by six month to facilitate election rigging

NIGERIA'S main opposition the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has raised fears that President Muhammadu Buhari plans to extend the tenure of inspector-general of police Alhaji Ibrahim Idris by another six months.

Alhaji Idris is due to retire early next year, having served the mandatory 35 years in the Nigerian Police Force which he joined in 1984. However, according to the PDP, President Buhari intends to extend his service so he will remain in office during the conducting of next year's general elections.

PDP national publicity secretary Kola Ologbondiyan, described the extension of Alhaji Idris’s tenure as an opportunity for the president to perpetrate his rigging plan for 2019. He added that the PDP was aware that Alhaji Idris had surrounded all the state commissioners of police with his own men, who would be following them to any strategic meetings and spying for him.

He said: “We reject in totality the extension of tenure of the inspector-general for another six months. We are aware that doing so the president wants to perpetrate his rigging plan for 2019 election.

“Our party is also aware that the inspector-general of police has surrounded the commissioners of police with his own men who would be following them to a strategic meeting, any meetings and be spying for him. We want to appeal to the inspector-general of police to insulate the police from politics.

Rejecting any extension plans, Mr Ologbondiyan said that even from President Buhari’s body language, it was quite clear that he was not ready to give Nigeria free and fair elections, come 2019. He added that President Buhari's refusal to sign the amended Electoral Act into law was further proof that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) intended to rig next year's polls.

Mr Ologbondiyan said: “President Buhari is totally against free and fair elections in the country as his refusal to sign the amended Electoral Act had shown, even as he said the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) which promised not to use the Incident Form, which allowed for rigging in past polls, was coming out with a format not quite different from one it was trying to discard. “So the position of the PDP is that Inec has a situation room and it must allow European Union and all other international, as well as local observers, have access to the situation rooms to guarantee free and fair elections.”

He noted that the APC was able to rig the recently concluded Osun State governorship poll due to its refusal to allow election observers to the situation room. However, Mr Ologbondiyan  assured Nigerians that the PDP was poised to thwart the rigging plans of the APC in the coming polls, saying that despite all barriers put in place, the party was able to let the world know it won the last Osun poll, which was thereafter manipulated.

In addition, Mr Ologbondiyan appealed to Nigerians not to allow themselves to be scared by the instruments of government. He added that they should all come out on election days, exercise their right and also ensure that they protected their votes from being stolen.