The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that the Muhammadu Buhari-led presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) are running from their shadows and haunted by their failures in governance.
PDP’s position is predicated on a statement by the Presidency on Tuesday, suggesting that the PDP is predicting a “nationwide agitation” worse than the October 2020 #EndSARS protests.
In his statement, spokesman to the president, Femi Adesina, said only a party still smarting from its snout being yanked from the honeypot, as happened to PDP in 2015, would threaten its country with anarchy, social upheaval, and disorderliness.
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But in its reaction, the PDP condemned the presidency’s statement, saying that from the “outburst of the Buhari Presidency, Nigerians now realize that the APC administration does not care about the suffering, agony, and life discounting experiences encountered by our citizens daily as a result of APC’s thoughtless and inhumane policies”.
The opposition party through its spokesman, Hon. Debo Ologunagba, said if there is anybody seeking to destabilize the nation, “it is the sinking, confused and discomfited APC that is clutching to straws and making unguarded statements including boasting that “heavens will not fall” over its refusal to address the lingering fuel crisis.
“The APC administration is afraid because its corruption, impunity, and recklessness which are responsible for the biting petrol and diesel crisis, collapsed national grid, distressed aviation sector, plummeting currency, and near collapse of the production and service sectors of the economy are being exposed by the PDP.
“APC is afraid of Nigerians for bungling the once-thriving $550 billion economy (largest in Africa and 26th globally) handed over to it by the PDP in 2015 and reducing our nation to the poverty capital of the world where over 80 million citizens, according to official reports, can no longer afford their daily meals and other basic necessities of life.
“Why would the APC not be afraid of the people when it opened our nation to terrorists and bandits who it reportedly imported from neighbouring countries in 2015 to help APC muscle and rig the elections, after which APC leaders failed to honour their deal to pay the said mercenaries for the heinous ‘services’ they were contracted to provide against Nigerians by the APC?
“The APC is uncomfortable, having been indicted for human rights violations including reported cases of extra-judicial killings, torture, illegal arrests, detentions, and other atrocious acts as contained in the June 2021 report of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
“Moreover, in stating that the October 2020 peaceful EndSARS protest by Nigerian youths signified ‘murder, mayhem, mass destruction, even cannibalism’, the APC administration has confirmed reports of its complicity and approval of the violent attacks and gruesome massacre of innocent youths at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos.
“Such stance on the EndSARS peaceful protest by our youths also questions the sincerity of President Buhari’s description of the protest as ‘genuine concerns and agitation by Nigerians’. The renewed negative tagging, therefore, appears to be a design by the APC to frame our youths for another onslaught.
“The PDP holds that the EndSARS peaceful protest signifies the resilience of Nigerian youths against injustice, suppression, and insensitive system being foisted on our nation by the APC administration. Our party, therefore, cautions the APC to perish the thought of venting its frustration on the PDP and Nigerian youths.
“It is often said that a bad workman complains about his tools, but a hopelessly irredeemable one (which the APC is) complains about others,” the PDP’s statement read.
The opposition said the APC must know that it is back, adding that the PDP stands with the people and will never be deterred from exposing the ruling party’s atrocities and fighting for the wellbeing of Nigerians as the party marches towards 2023 to “Rescue and Rebuild our nation from the misrule of the APC”.
