APC on destructive march, says PDP

The national leadership of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party has alleged that the All Progressives Congress is on a destructive march.

It said the pronouncements by some leaders of the opposition party were aimed at building what it called negativity around democracy with the aim of truncating it.

The National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, stated this on Tuesday at a press briefing in Abuja while reacting to the statement made by a former Head of State, Maj.Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), in which he said that President Goodluck Jonathan had declared war on Nigeria.

Buhari, a chieftain of the APC, also urged President Jonathan to pull the brakes on his administration’s runaway train of impunity in the interest of Nigeria’s survival and the sustenance of the nation’s democracy.

He said the recent induced impeachment or threats of impeachment of governors of opposition states, “just to decapitate the opposition, does not augur well for the survival of a fragile nation like Nigeria or the survival of its tenderfoot democracy.”

But Metuh said it was wrong to link either the President or the PDP to the gale of impeachment or threat of impeachment against the APC governors.

He said, “On the issue of impeachment in Adamawa and similar developments in other states, we hereby restate our respect for the principle of separation of powers.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the PDP has never been involved in any impeachment process and we wish to publicly urge our members in all the state Houses of Assembly to thread with caution and be guided by due process and rule of law in the execution of their legislative duties.”

He regretted that his party had observed that the series of pronouncements and threats from leading opposition politicians on the state of the nation, might not be a mere coincidence.

Metuh said, “These leaders have taken turns, in quick succession, in this vicious condemnation of the leadership of the country is not a mere coincidence.

“Nigerians suspect, and we stand to be corrected ( sic) that these pronouncements are not in vain but part of the larger plot to build a groundswell of negativity with the ultimate aim of truncating our hard earned democracy.

“We are therefore not puzzled that the common denominator of these orchestrated statements are weighty but baseless accusations against the Federal Government and the ruling party on the health of our democracy and the unity of the country.”

The spokesperson for the ruling party said that a catalogue of events involving these politicians and their political party indicated that they were the real causative agents of the issues they had been accusing the Federal Government and the PDP of.

He said that just a few months ago, the APC was basking in the euphoria of their merger as well as their alleged dominance of the Nigerian political space and saw nothing wrong in the democratic institutions and the processes.

Metuh said that it was therefore hypocritical that the same APC had turned around in condemnation simply because according to him, the party was currently suffering what he described as a self inflicted reversal of fortune.

“While it is simplistic for the APC to harp on perceived infractions or failings of the PDP, they conveniently ignore the fact that their actions and inactions pose the greatest threat to democracy,” he added.

While insisting that the APC was a threat to democracy, Metuh said that for over a year, the leaders of the APC had sustained attacks on critical institutions of government.

Apart from this, he alleged that they had also committed enormous efforts in fanning the ambers of violence and division among Nigerians with the aim of destabilizing the PDP-led Federal Government, weaken the institutions and truncate the nation’s democracy.

He said, “Nigerians are very much aware that the APC and its leaders have been at the centre of actions and utterances that have in no small measure been promoting hatred, violence and division in the polity.

“These are the very acts that embolden insurgency and pave the way for the ignoble design of the APC which is to overheat the system, weaken the foundation of our nationhood, all in desperation for power.

“Sustained vitriolic attacks and campaign of calumny against the legislature, the very citadel of the democracy and the will of the people at the national and state levels is at the top of this APC destabilisation programme.”

He alleged that on many occasions, the APC had labeled federal legislatures as corrupt accusing them of receiving millions of dollars to do PDP’s bidding and that the opposition party had also cast aspersions on the state legislature, calling them “pliant assemblies”, with the sole aim of projecting them as compromised and unreliable .

Metuh alleged further that Nigerians had also witnessed the onslaughts and spirited attempts to destroy the judiciary by the APC, adding that when the opposition party secured a favourable judgment that gave it three states, there was nothing wrong.

Rather, he said the leaders of the APC hailed the judiciary and that once a ruling was against the APC, its leaders turn the heat on the judiciary.

However, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said it was wrong to say that leaders of the party had been engaging in destructive criticisms and that their statements were inflammatory.

Mohammed asked Nigerians to put statements made by APC leaders side by side those made by Chief Edwin Clark and Mujahaid Asari-Dokunbo and “then let the world know who is not for peace.

“Anybody who reads Buhari’s statement would know that this is a statesman speaking. He said impeachment and threat of impeachments were not been followed constitutionally and that the PDP is using money to impeach governors.

“Like the case of Adamawa, the former governor (Murtala Nyako) was not personally served and the acting chief judge who restrained the State House of Assembly from going ahead with the impeachment was the one who also set up the panel without vacating the order.

“In Edo State, the PDP offered our members N75m to defect and they refused. This is what they are using missing monies for and we have said that money were missing before, but the government said no.”

Culled from Punch