The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has said that it rejects the result of the Ondo State governorship election held last Saturday and wants the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to cancel the exercise.

This was contained in a statement issued on Monday by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Dayo Adeyeye, which also accused INEC of “advanced election rigging” in the Edo and Ondo States elections.

The PDP maintained that last Saturday’s election in Ondo State did not reflect the will of the people and has directed its candidate in the exercise, Eyitayo Jegede to challenge the process in court.

“INEC has however graduated from Inconclusive Elections as seen in Kogi, Bayelsa, Osun, FCT, Imo, Nassarawa and some other previous by-elections in the Country to ‘Advanced Election Rigging’, as in the cases of Edo and Ondo states Gubernatorial Elections,” the statement read.

According to the statement, the APC took advantage of the hardship it had inflicted on the people, “which have indeed made all Nigerians virtually beggars in their own country”, to engage in massive buying of votes even while security agents watched.

“It is common knowledge that the APC agents openly bought votes of the electorates in the full glare of security operatives who did nothing to prevent such dastardly violation of the Electoral Law,” Adeyeye stated.

“In view of the fact that the Election was blatantly manipulated from the beginning to the end to favour the APC, we vehemently reject the results of the November 26, 2016 gubernatorial election in Ondo State.

“The election and all actions leading to it fall short of laid down principles guiding conduct of elections in Nigeria.

“We have instructed our candidate and the Ondo State Chapter of our party to proceed to the tribunal to challenge the outcome of the election.

“We call on the judiciary to redeem Nigeria’s image on this matter as we request for the total cancellation of the election in Ondo State,” the statement concluded.