Society Gists

Ahead of Tuesday’s governorship primary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Bayelsa State,  the party Chairman, Cleopas Moses, has accused some front-line aspirants of sending N1million fake bank alerts to delegates.

He said some of the delegates started receiving the fake alerts with a promise that they could access the money by Wednesday after their fate had been decided by them.

The PDP chairman, who described the action as a political fraud, noted that it was the height of desperation and called on anti-graft agencies to investigate the issue and make those behind it to face the long arm of the law.

He said the issue amounted to blackmail and vote buying, which he pointed out was a serious offence in the nation’s electoral system with very punitive measures against culprits.

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The PDP helmsman wondered why the duo  would engage in such massive and outright electoral fraud all because of power, adding that they lacked credibility and the requiste morality to govern a state like Bayelsa.

He stressed that all the aspirants had been given the opportunity to interface with the delegates in the various hotels but the duo rather than convince the delegates decided to use ‘419’ tactics so as to fraudulently win the party’s ticket.

Moses called on Bayelsans especially PDP delegates to be wary of cunning characters, who were only interested in converting the commonwealth of the people to theirs.

He maintained that the aspirants were not the kind of people Bayelsans need and urged the people to use the coming governorship primary to reject them and finally retire them from politics.

He said: “We got a very disturbing report of how two aspirants are sending fake bank alerts to some delegates to make them vote for them on Tuesday.

“This is desperation taken too far. We feel that if they are popular then that is not the road to travel. Allowing them access to the delegates like others is to sell their manifesto and not engage in what is clearly vote buying.

“We call on the EFCC and ICPC to investigate this issue and bring those behind the fraudulent bank alerts to book. On our part as a party we will not condone such actions