Director General of the Musa/Aro Campaign Organisation, Hon. T. J. Yusuf, has called on the good people of Kogi State to remain steadfast in their resolve to vote the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and usher in a new dawn in the State on November 16.
Yusuf said results of researches and surveys by several pollsters and groups have returned an overwhelming victory for the PDP candidates, Mr. Musa Atai Wada and his running mate, Mr. Sam Bamidele Aro in the November 16 election.
“The long, tortuous four years of hunger, poverty, violence, collapsed public infrastructure and services, insecurity and violence is coming to an end as happy days are coming again,” Yusuf told a cross-section of volunteers for the campaign yesterday.
The member of the House of Assembly said that on return to office, the PDP government of Musa/Aro would immediately declare a state of emergency in all critical socio-economic sectors of the state like infrastructure, education, health, agriculture and rural and urban development.
He regretted that intermittent water scarcity has returned to the state capital as the Greater Lokoja Water Works, which ended the intractable problem of water in the state capital and environs, had been left to decay by the present administration just as the multi-million state specialist hospital and diagnostic centre is no longer functioning.
“It is worrisome that after collecting close to N400 billion in less than four years, the present government has not only failed to embarked on any meaningful project that will improve the lives of the people, but it’s abandoning functional critical infrastructure inherited from the PDP administrations to rot away.”
“We can confidently say that the people will troop out en masse to remedy this situation on November 16. The situation is beyond partisanship, ethnicity, or religion. It is Kogites taking back their lives and retrieving their state from misrule. I can assure you that we shall win more than 75 per cent of the votes in each and all of the senatorial districts.
“Our opponents have nothing to campaign with or campaign on. They cannot ask civil servants for support, because they have dehumanised them. They cannot turn to pensioners because under this administration very many of them have died of hunger and inability to buy basic drugs that will keep them alive.
“They have confronted or fought almost everybody including members of their own party, university lecturers, the judiciary, traditional rulers, students etc. They have lost the trust of the people of Kogi State in particular and Nigerians at large.
“You cannot expect civil servants to be deceived because for the first time in four years, you paid one month’s salary as at when due because election is coming. And you still owe majority of them up to 43 months arrears!
“Who do they think they are deceiving? The people know that if you ever get there again, there may never be salaries for the next four years.”
He alleged that it’s against the background of self-induced mass rejection that the Governor Yahaya Bello government is now relying on violence, thuggery and election manipulation as their only option, describing it as sheer desperation.
“Because they are sure majority of the people will vote for Musa/Aro ticket, they want to cause mayhem and manipulate results. But that won’t help them because once an overwhelming majority of the people are against you, any rigging plan, even if it’s based on violence or saturating the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ad hoc staff with your agents, will fail,” he alleged.
He assured that the Musa/Aro Campaign Organisation was, however, committed to ensuring that security agencies and INEC live up to their constitutional obligation to ensure that the election is free, fair and transparent.
“Once that is done, victory is ours on November 16,” Yusuf said.
