Ahead of the 2019 general elections, National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC Adams Oshiomhole revealed that many opposition political parties have being demanding payment of money to endorse it’s Presidential Candidate, Muhammadu Buhari and work for his victory.

Oshiomhole who made this revelation when he received delegations from the European Union, EU and International Republican Institute, IRI at the APC National Secretariat Abuja regretted that the proliferation of political parties has created avenue for vote buying in next year’s election as they do not feature candidates for election but they go about endorsing money bag political parties.

He noted that, “INEC tried to restrict the registration of political parties, the judiciary said no you can register anybody who wants to but the result is that, we have a long ballot paper which poses challenges on election day with regard to how people are going to identify who to vote for.

“I can tell you how many requests I have from these so called political parties that if you pay me this we will announce that we are supporting your Presidential candidate. So people have formed political parties as platform for trading.”

The APC National Chairman denied allegations by opposition parties that the ruling party was not disposed to a free, fair and peaceful elections and called on EU and IRI to help in sensitizing Nigerians especially the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP on the need to eschew hate speech and stop spreading fake news capable of fanning the embers of fire in the already volatile political environment.

He particularly tasked the international bodies to prevail on INEC to accredit only election monitors not sponsored by political parties and to engage with Civil Society Organizations that are not politically inclined to evolve measures that would ensure credible polls while they should help to stop the turning of worship centres into political theatres.

Earlier, Thomas-Greenfield who spoke on behalf of the delegations, told Oshiomhole of the rising fear among opposition parties and Nigerians that the ruling party was planning to retain power in the 2019 general elections using state apparatuses.

Thomas-Greenfield noted that the whole world is keenly interested in the outcome of Nigeria’s next election and charged the APC led government to improve on the successes the country recorded in 2015 and promised to factor in the process by engaging critical stakeholders especially in reducing hate speech but encouraging issue based campaigns.

•Sourced from a BusinessDAY report

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