CNPP salutes NSA’s courage

[TheNation]

 Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) has commended what it called the” uncommon courage” of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Gen. Andrew Owoye Azazi (rtd) for blaming the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) over the Boko Haram menace.  

In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Osita Okechukwu, CNPP advised President Goodluck Jonathan and his party to “honourably accept the responsibility that the fierce struggle for power is the root cause of the fault lines dislocating our democracy.”

The statement reads: “PDP had manipulated its primary elections and indeed general elections, alienated its members and a critical segment of the polity; contrary to the provisions of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

 “These undemocratic and unconstitutional acts without doubt breed acrimony and simulate insecurity; this is the General’s message.

“In this context, we caution the PDP to neither dump the message nor the messenger; rather PDP should carefully dissect, analyze and reflect on the message placed on marble by Gen. Azazi. It is a message we had in league with other Nigerian patriots been dishing out, which fell on deaf ears as PDP is consumed by Food is Ready philosophy, where the motto is share the money.

“The unfortunate outcome of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s stranglehold on the party is that since his election as president in 1999, neither PDP nor the nation has had free, fair and transparent election. We recall with nostalgia how Do-or-Die tactics was deployed to rig in Senator Barnabas Gemade against favourite late Chief Sunday Awoniyi as chairman in Nov/Dec 1999 convention of PDP, same garrison dosage was administed to hoist Chiefs Audu Ogbe, Vincent Ogbulafor, Okwesilieze Nwodo and Bamanga Tukur.

 “It is our candid view that the zoning arrangement of the PDP might be well intentioned, but as Gen Azazi posited was ill managed from the onset; for in the first instance Chief Obasanjo was a mismatch to compensate the South West for the annulment of Chief MKO Abiola’s victory. The South West demonstrated this in private with the then Head of State, Gen Abdulsalam Abubakar (rtd) and publicly by their voting pattern in 1999.Let the best rule country.”



TheNation