PDP Says APC Desperately Looking For Excuses To Truncate Democracy

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has described Wednesday’s statement issued by the All Progressives Congress (APC) accusing President Goodluck Jonathan of impunity and failure as a desperate effusion of noise, fury and falsehood, which are now the well-known trademark of the Nigerian equivalent of the ancient “Athenian thirty tyrants”, who would not mind bringing the nation to its knees in quest for power.

“The APC is trading in its best merchandise – falsehood, deceit, blackmail, sheer pernicious propaganda. This political party, the APC, is the centrifuge of violence in Nigeria, and like the thirty tyrants in the ancient Athens, is desperately looking for excuses to truncate democracy and ruin our collective destiny but Nigerians are not ready to dig in with them”, PDP said.

The ruling party in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, said that it was on record that no administration in the recent history of Nigeria achieved in its first three years, up to what President Jonathan has so far achieved despite unprecedented security challenges.

The statement reads: “In the past three years, the Jonathan administration has squarely tackled massive infrastructural development with thousands of kilometers of federal roads and bridges either constructed, reconstructed or rehabilitated while the long forgotten rail system is now steaming back to life with modern coaches even as expansion of network is on-going. Various measures for air safety also took centre stage with the vast expansion and rehabilitation of facilities at all federal airports in a gale of efforts that changed the face of the nation’s aviation industry in less three years.

“Transformation also touched critical infrastructures in Agricultural Transformation Project where over six million farmers have been empowered and in housing where the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance is anchoring a new dimension in mass affordable shelter. In industry and investment, an investment friendly environment has been created, effective wealth creation mechanism ensured and competent indigenous entrepreneurs now, reaping the benefits and taking centre stage in the global market competition. The course of in-flowing investments has also spurred indigenous manufacturing, even in automobiles, hitherto thought impossible.

“The Almajiri education system in the North is a creation of the Jonathan administration just like the YouWin and SURE-P projects whose excels in the improvement of the Nigerian living standard is obvious. The unbundling of the PHCH is simultaneously going on with accompanying investment drive to ensure stability in generation and supply while the nation has also been witnessing stability in supply and pricing of petroleum products. The same goes for the expansion of the inland water ways.

“Alas, the votes now count. A nation formerly a b*tt of international criticism for flawed elections has since 2011 been receiving worldwide accolades for credible conduct of elections. One man , one vote which ensured the triumph of the will of the people first in Edo, Ondo, Anambra all won by the opposition political parties also ensured a credible Ekiti governorship poll where Governor Fayemi did not only accept his defeat as a clear verdict of Ekiti people but congratulated the victorious PDP candidate. What a wacko song then is Fayemi’s party, the APC now treating the nation to?

“Give the people, a credible electoral system and every other shall fall in place. This, the President has done. The APC must therefore like other well-meaning Nigerians commend the President for this feat which it has been unwilling to allow in its enclave as Nigerians have seen in the conduct of council elections in Lagos, Ogun, Osun and Edo States.

“No doubt the APC is afraid and bitter that its prematurely celebrated electoral fortunes, its vaunted popularity to win the 2015 election is being gradually smashed to its face as mere illusion. It lost Ekiti to popular votes and is afraid that in Osun where its divisive ideology has created an acrimonious division in its educational system amidst non-performance in other sectors, it will also fall, hence must heap the blame on President Jonathan. The APC is clearly looking for grounds for fancied violence and subsequent truncation of democracy.

“Corruption, this corruption, a regular sing song of the APC, a party that has deliberately grown forgetful of the fact that corruption walks on four in the states under its control and that in its topmost leadership, the Emperor of Bourdilion, lies the pantheon of corruption. The people of Ekiti grew wiser and shook off a regime of internal colonialism, of high taxation, of outrageous contract pricing and of the overlordship of greed of few over their common wealth. Nigerians know where the moth of corruption is being bred.

“On the contrary, the Freedom of Information Act meant to arm every Nigerian in fight against corruption, which Lagos, the APC flagship is refusing to domesticate till today, was in the cooler for nearly a decade until President Jonathan dusted it and passed same into law. In speech, in action and in body language, President Jonathan has left nobody in doubt of his principled stand on the rule of law and transparency and only in the narrow world of mischief of the APC does this matter less”.