“If the PDP and the Presidency want to show that they care for Nigerians, they should end their complacency, corruption-hugging…”
The All Progressives Congress, APC, has asked the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to stop playing politics with the lives of Nigerians, saying it is wrong, irresponsible and uncharitable to seek to make political gains out of the worsening and deadly terror attacks in the country.
In a statement issued in Gusau, Zamfara State on Thursday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, the party said Nigerians are too discerning to be hoodwinked by PDP’s ceaseless finger-pointing and name calling, as exhibited by the party’s overly-exuberant and rarely-introspecting spokesman.
It said Nigerians who watched the live telecast of the APC rally in Ado Ekiti on Wednesday saw how the party, left with no choice than to proceed with the rally in view of the suddenness of the Jos twin bombings and the fact that INEC cannot be prevailed upon to change the timetable of the Ekiti polls, made it as somber as possible under the circumstances.
”Despite the presence of musical groups and other performers, all musical breaks in the programme and all other scheduled performances were cut out, while the rally itself was drastically abridged.
There is no doubt that the PDP’s spokesman did not even bother to get the full details of the rally before rushing to the media in his usual jumpy self.
”Mr. Olisa Metuh is definitely eager to act like an opposition spokesman rather than the spokesman for the ruling party.
This is not a problem as his party is definitely fighting hard to trade places with the APC as the main opposition party come 2015. We can only appeal to Mr. Metuh to wait for a few more months and, in the meantime, start learning the ropes as an opposition spokesman,” APC said.
The party reminded the PDP that the Ekiti rally was not the same thing as the illegal rally in Kano, where President Goodluck Jonathan led other PDP leaders to engage in Azonto dance less than 24 hours after 75 of his compatriots were killed in the first Nyanya bombing.
It also said the Ekiti rally cannot be equated with the failure of leadership, the cluelessness and the callousness exhibited by PDP leaders, including President Jonathan and Mrs. Kema Chikwe, in the aftermath of the abduction of school girls in Chibok; or the fact that the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces is so afraid of a band of terrorists that he has failed to live up to his presidential billing by visiting Chibok.
”It is therefore hypocritical, insincere, thoughtless, insensitive and uncaring for the PDP – a party without soul or conscience, a party under whose watch over 12,000 Nigerians have been bombed into smithereens by Boko Haram alone – to be seeking to paint the APC in its own warped and grossly distorted image,” APC said.
The party said while the PDP has said it cancelled its rally in Ekiti because of the Jos tragedy, the PDP-led Federal Government, AKA Protectors of Nigerian Posterity, has continued to run its shameless adverts on TV comparing President Jonathan with legends of their time like Martin Luther King Jnr; Nelson Mandela; Lee Kuan Yew and Barrack Obama, even as Nigerians continue to die daily due to the President’s globally-acknowledged incompetence, ineptitude and cluelessness!
”Nigerians should not be deceived by the propaganda that the PDP is shelving its Ekiti rally because of the Jos tragedy. No! The real reason the PDP has postponed the rally is because it was intimidated by the crowd that it saw at the APC rally in Ekiti on Wednesday.
”Having realized that this will be a tough act to follow, and not knowing what to do next, the PDP quickly postponed its rally, supposedly in sympathy for those who were killed because of the ruling party’s years of misrule, but in reality to buy time to enable it use the nation’s scarce resources to rent a crowd for its Ekiti rally.
”If the PDP and the Presidency want to show that they care for Nigerians, they should end their complacency, corruption-hugging and leadership failure that have put Nigerian lives at risk today more than at any other time in the country’s history,” APC said.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed
Interim National Publicity Secretary
All Progressives Congress (APC)