PDP is Nigeria’s problem, opposition parties tell Jonathan

Three leading opposition parties on Thursday faulted President Goodluck Jonathan’s claim that democracy would have collapsed in the  country without the ruling People’s Democratic Party.
The All Nigeria Peoples Party, the Action Congress of Nigeria and the Congress for Progressive Change said contrary to Jonathan’s claim, the PDP was the problem of democracy in the country.
The President, had at the PDP 60th National Executive Council meeting in Abuja on Tuesday said, “People, who want to drown us know that without the PDP, probably, the Republic would have collapsed.”
Responding to the claim,  the ANPP said the President was not saying the truth.
Rather, it said the PDP had destroyed democracy in the country.
Speaking in a telephone interview with one of our correspondents, the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Chief Emma Eneukwu, said it was Nigerians who had been keeping vigil not to enable the PDP to destroy the nation’s democracy.

He said the PDP-led Federal Government had hijacked the Independent National Electoral Commission and therefore could boast that without the ruling party, democracy would become a thing of the past in the country.
He said, “The President was saying the opposite. He was not sincere with his comments.
“He knows that his political party is the problem of Nigeria and also aware that Nigerians now reject it and its candidates during elections.”
The ACN National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement, said the PDP was suffering from “delusion of grandeur.”
 He said the PDP was the main problem hindering the growth of democracy in Nigeria because of its anti-democratic “antics, election manipulation tendencies and lack of respect for the rule of law.”
Mohammed said, “Mr. President, the reason Nigeria’s democracy has survived thus far is not the robustness of the PDP, as you have  said, but the determination and courage of the good people of Nigeria, who have resolved to say ‘never again’ to  anti-democratic forces, as well as the robust opposition mounted by a few progressive forces.
“Were it left for the PDP, this democracy as we know it, would have become history.”
The National Chairman, of the ACN, Chief Bisi Akande, described Jonathan’s claim as a fraudulent joke.
Akande said it was evident that the opposition in the country had better knowledge of the governance than the PDP.
Speaking through his media aide, Mr. Lani Baderinwa, Akande said large scale insecurity, poverty, corruption and inefficient administration had become the hallmark of the PDP governance.
Also, the National Publicity Secretary of the Congress for Progressive Change, Mr. Rotimi Fashakin, in a telephone interview with one of our correspondents,  said  the PDP was cause of tension in the country.
He stated, “The  PDP’s devious politics is the cause of the stress and threat to the nation’s democracy.

PUNCH