The All Progressives Congress (APC) has restated its call for a meeting of the leadership of the APC and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to block further escalation of rising violence across the country, ahead of next month’s general election.
The party in a statement issued in Lagos on Tuesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said such a meeting will send a powerful message of zero tolerance to violence to the supporters of both parties. It will also send a message to Nigerians and the international community of the readiness of the political actors to eschew violence.
Mohammed noted that the call was a follow-up to the practical steps that the party had taken as far back as May 2014, when it first wrote to the leadership of the PDP calling for such a meeting.
”Following up on a meeting of representatives of both parties in Washington, DC, US, April 7-8 2014 under the auspices of the CSIS Nigeria Election Forum, at which it was agreed that a joint meeting of both parties be convened to discuss and agree on the crucial issue of a Code of Conduct for the campaigns and the elections, we wrote a letter to the PDP suggesting a bipartisan meeting to address the issue.
”We have since been following up on the letter, the latest effort being on Dec. 28th 2014, when we again called for the holding of the bipartisan meeting. Apart from its reply to our initial letter, the PDP has not responded to our peace overtures till date,” the APC said.
Regardless of how the PDP responds, the APC said, being a peaceful party, it will continue to educate its members on the need to shun all forms of violence before, during and after the elections.
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