The Action Congress of Nigeria and the Peoples Democratic Party are currently engaged in a war of words over the governorship ambition of Mr. Opeyemi Bamidele.
The PDP stirred the hornet's nest on Thursday when it criticised ACN's leader, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu, for allegedly barring Bamidele, an ACN member of the House of Representatives, from contesting the 2014 governorship election in Ekiti State.
Acting National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr. Tony Okeke, accused Tinubu of "carrying his despotism too far" by allegedly seeking to bar some persons from contesting the Ekiti State governorship election in 2014.
He said it is extremely "wicked and undemocratic" for Tinubu to order Bamidele to forget his governorship ambition.
In its reaction to the PDP onslaught, the National Publicity Secretary of the ACN, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said in a statement in Lagos on Friday that the PDP overstepped its bounds for making comments about ACN's internal affairs.
Mohammed said, "This is unlike the situation in the PDP where even a President, who has failed woefully, using his own lowered 'marking scheme,' is being offered an automatic ticket! ACN rewards excellence, not indolence, and we have no apologies for this."
The party also wondered "when Mr. Bamidele appointed the PDP as his defender."
The ACN spokesman said the PDP overstepped its bounds by criticising, "in the crudest of language for which it is now notorious," the decision of the ACN leadership to settle the rift between Governor Kayode Fayemi and Bamidele.
He said the ACN leadership had no regrets for saying Fayemi should be allowed to go for a second term.
This, he said, was because he had performed well, adding that a student who did well deserved promotion.
ACN wondered why the PDP leadership had been gallivanting from one zone to another trying to reconcile its ever-warring members, if indeed the ruling party believed that other parties had no right to do the same.
He said, "It seems, however, that what has irked the PDP is that where its own reconciliation efforts have failed woefully, because they were insincere, ACN's have succeeded, due largely to the discipline in the party and the sincerity of its efforts.
"After all, we don't go around suspending or destroying our best performers in the name of reconciliation."
The Punch
This whole Nigerian politics of a thing is already turning to something else. It is not peaceful anymore. Always rifts and wars...