The All Progressives Congress says the ultimate plan of the Peoples Democratic Party-led Federal Government is to postpone the elections and install an interim government.
The party said President Goodluck Jonathan had become jittery, knowing that he would lose the elections.
The APC, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Tuesday, said this just as some groups on Tuesday staged protests at the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission, demanding the postponement of the elections.
On Monday, four Nigerians approached an Abuja High Court, demanding that the elections should be shifted so as to enable those without Permanent Voter Cards to collect their cards.
The PDP had denied the allegations that it was behind the calls for the postponement of the election but the APC said most of the protests were being sponsored by President Goodluck Jonathan so as to have reasons to postpone the elections.
The statement read, “Despite their defeat in the court of public opinion, the no-election proponents are now working hard on their back-up plan, which is to force a constitutional crisis that will ultimately lead to their goal: Interim Government!
“Despite sponsoring pseudo-experts and cash-and-carry analysts to make the television rounds to canvass for the postponement of the election, in addition to instigating protests against INEC, Nigerians have rejected the call for election shift, which is a big blow to those who want the elections postponed to give the Jonathan administration time to recover lost ground.
“The advocates of election shift may have retreated, but they have not given up on their push to scuttle the elections. In fact, a conference organised on Monday to consider the resolution of the National Conference on the 2015 elections was turned into a campaign for election postponement by the usual culprits.”
But the Nigerian Army has denied knowledge of any plan for an interim government as being speculated in the social media.
The Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Col. Sani Usman, said in an electronic mail on Tuesday that the allegations in the social media that the Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen Kenneth Minimah, planned to take over government in the interim in the event of a victory by the APC were untrue.
Usman said that the rumour against the army and other serving senior officers of the service was designed by mischief makers to cause disaffection within the service.
The army spokesman said that those peddling the rumour were on a mission to distract the army from focusing on its statutory responsibility of protecting the territorial integrity of the country and to reverse the recent victories of the army against the insurgents in the several fronts of the North east.
He said that the claim was a disservice to the army in view of its contributions to the growth of democracy in the country.
Credit: PUNCH
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