PDP says APC wants to abort democracy
The Peoples Democratic Party on Tuesday charged the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) of working to abort democracy in the country.
The party's National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, at a news conference in Abuja on Tuesday, distanced the party from the current move to impeach the Nasarawa State Governor, Alhaji Umaru Al-Makura, by the state House of Assembly.
According to him, the party has never been involved in any impeachment of any state governor or other political office holders.
Metu said that recent vituperations and allegations by the leadership of APC against the PDP-led Federal Government leaders were not mere coincidence or vain statements, but a well-orchestrated plot with the ultimate goal of aborting the country's nascent democracy..
He said they were all intended to build a groundswell of negativity.
He said, “We are bold to claim that nobody on either side of the divide in Nasarawa State can claim the involvement of the Presidency or that of our national leadership in the impeachment saga.
“The PDP challenges APC leadership to produce any corroboration of this allegation within the government of Nasarawa State.
“The Governor of Nasarawa State has never and can never lay claim to the complicity of the presidency and the PDP leadership in this matter.”
On the impeachment in Adamawa and similar developments in other states, the PDP national publicity secretary restated the party's respect for the principle of separation of powers.
The PDP charged its members in state Houses of Assembly to be guided by due process and rule of law in the execution of their legislative duties.
“We urge our members in all state legislatures to thread with caution and be guided by due process and the rule of law in the execution of their legislative duties,” Metuh said.
He said that recent events involving the opposition indicated that they were the real causative agents of the issues they accused the Federal Government and the PDP of.
According to him, the APC leadership had turned around in condemnation simply because they are currently suffering a self-inflicted reversal of fortune.
He said: “While the APC harps on perceived infractions or failings of the PDP, they conveniently ignore the fact that their actions and inactions posed the greatest threat to democracy.”
Metuh said that for over a year, the APC leadership had sustained attacks on critical government institutions and had also committed enormous efforts in fanning the ambers of violence and division among Nigerians.
This, he said, was with the aim of destabilising the PDP-led Federal Government, weaken government institutions and truncate the country's democracy.
He stressed that APC leaders had been at the centre of actions and utterances that had in no small measure been promoting hatred, violence and division in the polity.
This, he said, were the very acts that embolden insurgency and pave the way for the ignoble, adding that APC's design was to overheat the system and weaken the nation's democracy.
Metuh noted that the APC had on many occasions labeled federal legislatures as corrupt, accusing them of receiving millions of dollars to do PDP's bidding and calling state legislature “pliant assemblies”.
The APC, he stressed, had also engaged in spirited attempts to turn the heat on the judiciary each time a judgment was passed against it and had continued to project the Independent National Electoral Commission as partisan.
“However, the same APC described the INEC in superlatives when they won the Edo state governorship election,” Metuh said.
He added that the military was not left out in APC's agenda of destruction as it had continued to project it as weak, compromised and incapable of giving protection to Nigerians.
All this, he said, was in their determination to undermine the PDP-led Federal Government.
He called on Nigerians to be alert to the anti-democratic activities of the APC.
Metuh noted that democratically elected local government councils in Imo State were sacked by the state's APC-led government to the disdain and chagrin of the citizens.
The same scenario, he said, played out in Rivers State where the APC-led government sacked the elected Chairman of Obio/Akpo Local Council and in Edo State, where Governor Adams Oshiomhole dissolved elected councilors before the expiration of their tenure.
Metuh said: “In Edo, Nasarawa and Lagos States, our great party won seats in the local government elections only for the APC-led state governments to upturn the results in their favour.
“Nigerians can only imagine what will be the order of the day if the APC is in control of the centre.”