In our quest for a robust democracy where a vibrant opposition keeps the party in power on its toes via constructive criticism and offering alternative policy plans, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had upon the registration of All Progressives Congress (APC) on July 31, 2013 congratulated the party and advised it to enrich the political space with positive ideas.
We again admonished the party along the same line after the election of its National Executives on June 14, 2014 to “ensure an issue based opposition that will purposefully and constructively engage and challenge the PDP with decency and maturity as prescribed by democratic tenets and principles.”
Stating that Nigerians deserve a vibrant and patriotic opposition driven only by the national interest, we charged the new APC leadership to “put the unity and welfare of Nigerians ahead of other considerations and jettison all divisive tendencies including unguarded statements that overheat the polity and pitch Nigerians against one another”.
As we inch towards the 2015 general elections, it has become crystal clear that we had in error dressed the APC in oversized robe. We clearly charted for them a job that is way beyond their pay grade. We can say without any fear of contradictions that the APC in its 14 months of existence has shown that no serious minded person should call it an opposition party as it has demonstrated to be nothing more than a band of anarchists, scaremongers and idle politicians.
The motley assembly of political opportunists and frustrated office seekers in over a year of its registration has issued 117 press statements which ALL have been devoted to abusing President Goodluck Jonathan and PDP officials and promoting division among Nigerians.
There has not been ONE press statement in which the APC had taken up any major policy issue by the PDP and offered Nigerians how it intends to do it better if it ever had the chance to govern the country. Statement after statement, all the APC pours out are bile, hate insult and low-quality propaganda from the stable of its Goebbelian ilk and Chemical Ali breed.
In the same vein, APC leaders have continued to make inflammatory utterances tailored to incite hatred and violence and ultimately balkanize our nation. The series of threats by APC leaders ahead of the 2015 general election and the announcement by their National Chairman that they will form a parallel government should they lose the 2015 presidential election clearly point to their anti-Nigeria agenda.
With nothing to offer the country as a party conceived in perfidy and born in opportunism, they strive every now and then to look for scandals to feast on while attempting to corrupt all the institutions of accountability to shield the many maggots that dominate the ranks of its top chieftains.
It boggles the mind how a party where a kilometer of road costs N1billion in states under its control by companies linked to one of its henchmen as against less than N50m when PDP governors were in charge looks outside its house for scandals. What can be more scandalous than 20% of the Internally Generated Revenue in its richest state going into the pockets of one of the party owners consistently for over 16 years now? Yet, the poster boys of greed are today chanting "change" in our country!
This corrosive outfit has done so much harm to our polity that words have lost their meanings. For example calling themselves "progressives" is the greatest oxymoron in our political lexicon since amalgamation. Their major criterion for anyone to be a progressive is having one or two headlines of insults heaped on the President and PDP officers. As an elder statesman succinctly puts it, if a group of armed robbers held a press conference to abuse President Jonathan, the APC leaders would go and beg them to become their "navigators".
Indeed, the PDP had looked forward to a robust opposition that will constructively engage on issue-for -issue and policy-for-policy debate on nation building only for the APC to expose its hollowness as an ‘Anarchic Peoples Club’.
We trust that Nigerians are too politically sophisticated to be hoodwinked into swapping our Transformation Agenda with janjaweed politics garnished with pedestrian rabble-rousing.
When these forged progressives come to town invoking the imagery of violence, preaching hate and marching on our fault lines, let the patriotic people of Nigeria ask: “Progressive’ Politicians, where is your roadmap to progress?”
Signed:
Olisa Metuh
National Publicity Secretary
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