Security has been beefed up in Offa Local
Government Area of Kwara State as tension
mounts over the local government election taking
place today. The election was ordered by the court which
about six months ago nullified the earlier one
after the then Local Government Chairman,
Saheed Popoola, and the councillors all of the
Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) had spent two
years in office. The then ACN men are contesting the election on
the platform of the newly registered All
Progressives Congress (APC) into which ACN had
dissolved and they would contest against their
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) opponents in the
earlier election. A statement signed by the State Police Public
Rations Officer, Olufemi Fabode, warned against
any violence that could affect the election, saying
his command would not tolerate any act of
thuggery or lawlessness from any quarters. However, the APC has accused the Kwara chapter
of the PDP of crying wolf in its allegation that it
plans to disrupt the election, saying the PDP is
indeed the purveyor of violence and the
mastermind of rigging. In a statement issued in London on Friday by its
National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed,
APC said the allegation is also an admittance of
failure on the part of the PDP, which has been in
power in Kwara over the last 10 years. ''If a government that has been in power for this
length of time, that has control over the police
and the State Security Service (SSS) is now crying
wolf over an isolated local government re-run, it
can only mean one thing, that the government
has lost control of events in the state and that it is no longer sure of the support of the people it
claims to be governing. ''The truth is that the PDP has never won elections
in Offa Local Government, and they are convinced
that Saturday's elections will not be different,
hence the shameful allegation of violence and
rigging against the APC,'' it said.
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