ANAMBRA: APC FAULTS ARREST OF ‘ELECTION MONITORS’ FROM OSUN

The All Progressives Congress has accused the police of “acting out the script of the Peoples Democratic Party for Saturday’s governorship election in Anambra by arresting election monitors from Osun State and labelling them as thugs.”
In a statement in Lagos on Friday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the report that a “crack team” of the police in Imo State had arrested 180 “armed hoodlums carrying fake voters cards, official identity cards of INEC and Independent Observer identity cards” was “nothing but tales by the moonlight.”
APC said, “Those who were arrested by the increasingly partisan police are election monitors from Osun, who are members of the Justice and Equality Organisation, an INEC-accredited election monitoring NGO. With INEC having trained key officials of the accredited election monitoring NGOs, those trained are now training their members in readiness for the election. Those trained by INEC are in Owerri.
“Those whom the police have labelled as thugs are members of the Justice and Equality Organisation. They are in Owerri for training ahead of the election. They chose Owerri because of its proximity to Anambra and its affordable hotel costs.
“None of them is a member of the APC, despite the insinuation by the police, and none is armed, because you don’t need guns to monitor elections. Any weapon exhibited by the police must have been procured by them to justify their gaffe.
“The only offence that the arrested election monitors have committed, in the eyes of the police, is that they are from a staunchly APC state with zero tolerance for the do-nothing, bumbling PDP.”
Source: Punch