The Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, has assured that with vigilance of the Nigerian youths, nobody will be able to rig the 2019 general elections.

Receiving the national, zonal and state youth leaders of the PDP in his office, he also assured them that the National Assembly caucus of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would not be intimidated from holding the government accountable, just as it would continue to speak the truth in defence of democracy.

In a statement by his media aide, Uche Anichukwu, Ekweremadu said, “Nobody should be deceived that they will rig elections in 2019. The international community will also be watching; and like the late Sam Mbakwe said, ‘if you are awake, the rat will never take your fish.’ So if we shine our eyes, nobody will rig us out.”

“I’m sure some of you are now conversant with the misrepresentation of my statement on the floor of the senate last week where I cautioned against brigandage, impunity and thuggery; and I said as leaders and politicians, we must do the correct thing before we endanger our democracy. That was what I said.

“Never bother about their propaganda. We will continue to speak the truth. We will continue to defend our democracy and urge our leaders to always do the right thing.

“Sometimes, we may be misunderstood, but we will remain unrelenting. It was the great Nnamdi Azikiwe who said that the best judge of human conduct is conscience. Keep saying the right thing. The person you are speaking to is hearing you; someday his conscience will prick him and he will do the right thing,” he said.

Ekweremadu added that they would not allow anybody to truncate Nigeria’s democracy because “we believe that your own future is here now. Nobody will take his future in the past and come to continue your own future.”

He warned youths against any form of electoral violence, describing it as “an ill wind that blows no man any good.”

Earlier in his address, the National Youth Leader of the PDP, Hon. S.K.E Udeh Okoye, said Nigerian youths had suffered so much under the APC-led administration and were ready to support the PDP to return to power.