The presidential candidate in the just-concluded election enjoins President Muhammadu Buhari to reunite the country through programmes to eliminate poverty and divisions in the country

By Benprince Ezeh

KINGSLEY Moghalu, the presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party, YPP, has consoled the families that lost their loved ones in the just concluded Presidential, Senate and House of Representatives elections and also criticised Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC for its operational failures in the conduct of the elections.

Moghalu said that the massive vote-buying and vote-rigging through various methods as well as violence in several locations in the country had left the credibility of the election open to question.

In a statement he issued on February 23, and made available to Realnews, alleged that the All Progressive Congress, APC, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, had both been complicit in the malpractices.

Moghalu said that “the number of votes tallied for my candidacy by the INEC did not represent anything close to the electoral strength of that candidacy. These false numbers were the result of brazen theft of our votes and the suppression of our voters.

“That the strong determination of many of our citizens to reject the APC at the ballot box far outweighed the desire for real change in our polity and governance in 2019. So, although we did not win this election in terms of overall numbers of votes, the presidential election result is an indication of where our society is at present: 2019 is the last gasp of the old political order that has robbed Nigeria of real development. I trust and believe that this situation will change by 2023.”

He said because Nigerians in Diaspora have continued to remit billions of dollars home every year, they should be able to vote as from 2023.

That notwithstanding, he said President Muhammadu Buhari, having been declared winner of the 2019 polls by the INEC, he should form an inclusive government “that can heal our land and take millions of Nigerians out of crushing poverty.”

He argued: “These calls for a very different approach from recycling poverty through the APC government’s unsustainable populist initiatives that fail to create jobs or improve actual economic productivity and living standards.

“This will make our struggle for a better and well governed society, a productive and inclusive economy that breaks the backbone of poverty, and to restore Nigeria’s leadership role in the world continues. I for my part will remain engaged in that struggle over the long haul.”

BE

– Mar. 01, 2019 @14:33 GMT |