As another election year approaches, the ruling All Progressives Congress and its main rival, the Peoples Democratic Party, have not spared any issue to launch attacks on each other, not even the touchy issue of the recently released Dapchi Secondary School girls, following a two-month stint with their abductors.
This time, the gauntlets were respectively taken by the PDP National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, and the APC-led national government’s Information Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
Perhaps, we should ask the PDP what indeed the party knows about the abduction of the Dapchi girls, going by its statement that their abduction and release were stage-managed
Mohammed, who was APC’s national spokesman at a time the party was still in the opposition, was reputed for repeatedly lashing out at the then ruling PDP.
And Secondus, once an acting chairman of the party when PDP was in power, now feels it is time to pay the APC back in its own coin, it would seem.
He claimed, shortly after the Dapchi girls were let off the hook, that the girls’ abduction and subsequent release were stage-managed, to score political points.
Angered by this comment, Mohammed, in a shocking manner, called for the de-registration of the PDP by the Independent National Electoral Commission, averring that the party had failed both as a ruling and opposition party, through the statement.
He had said, “You are not unaware of the reaction of the naysayers – the main opposition PDP, in particular – to the release of the Dapchi girls. What called for non-partisan celebrations was rather thoughtlessly turned into politics, bad, despicable politics, that has no place in any democracy. At times of national tragedies, countries unite. This is the norm everywhere.
“Let me encapsulate my reaction to the disgraceful and insensitive politics that the PDP has been playing with the Dapchi girls…The PDP and its co-travellers do not understand that terrorism is a global problem. A terror attack on any country is an attack on all countries. The UN was among the first international organisations to condemn the abduction of the Dapchi girls and also among the first to welcome their release.”
He noted that the PDP needed to tell Nigerians what it knew about the abduction of the Dapchi girls, going by its statement that their abduction and release were stage-managed.
He added, “The party made itself a laughing stock within and outside Nigeria with that statement. Don’t they know that our international friends are involved in the process that led to the release of the girls?
Is it not also laughable that a party, which cannot hold even a non-elective convention, will be calling for the withdrawal of PDP’s certificate?
“Indeed, there should be a new criterion for withdrawing the registration of a party like the PDP, which has failed both as a ruling and an opposition party! If a party cannot rule and cannot be in opposition, what else can it do?”
But in a swift reaction to Mohammed’s comment, the Secondus-led PDP said the information minister was only acting out a script written by his party, to castrate the opposition for Buhari, ahead of 2019.
Secondus, through the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, raised the alarm over what he said was the plan by the APC administration to emasculate the opposition and pave the way for an alleged self-succession plan of President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said, “Our attention has been drawn to a press statement by the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, wherein he demanded that the certificate of registration issued to the PDP by the Independent National Electoral Commission should be withdrawn, because the PDP lost in an election and, according to him, does not know how to function as an opposition party.
“We want to alert all Nigerians of a clandestine plot by the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government to strangulate the main opposition party and plot the way for the self-succession plan of their candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari. Our party has been following all the schemes and shenanigans of the APC as the 2019 general elections draw nearer.”
He added, “The main plank of the plot is to ensure that President Buhari runs as a sole candidate in 2019. To achieve this grand plan, they must work to exterminate all known and perceived political opposition platforms in our country.
Is it not strange that a party which, in its almost five years of existence, cannot constitute a Board of Trustees (BoT) in line with the provisions of its own constitution, will be asking INEC to withdraw the certificate of a party whose all organs are intact and effectively functioning?”
“Is it not also laughable that a party, which cannot hold even a non-elective convention, will be calling for the withdrawal of PDP’s certificate? It is imperative to tell Alhaji Lai Mohammed and his cohorts in the APC that any masquerade that dances first will eventually have to watch the dance steps of others from the stand.”
The political drama spurned by the two parties, apparently, looks set to be riveting, in the days ahead.
