The
All Progressives Congress has accused the Presidency of violating the
Independent National Electoral Commission’s rule which bars political
parties and aspirants from campaigning for the 2015 elections.
The party’s National Publicity
Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who stated this in a statement on
Sunday, referred to the women’s rally organised in Abuja by President
Goodluck Jonathan’s wife, Patience on Thursday.
The APC asked the Presidency to tell
Nigerians why it had defied INEC rules by continuing to campaign for the
2015 elections contrary to INEC’s directive.
It urged the commission to sanction anyone responsible for the rally.
But the Presidency said the rally was
organised by the National Council of Women Societies in conjunction with
the President’s wife’s office and that it would be unpatriotic of
anybody to view the rally as a campaign for 2015 elections.
The APC said that Patience, at the rally, campaigned for her husband’s 2015 ambition.
The APC stance was in reaction to the
President’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin
Okupe’s criticisms of its leaders, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.)
and Lagos State former Governor, Bola Tinubu.
The opposition party’s statement read in
part, ‘’While one of the PDP gong-bearers, Okupe, was telling Nigerians
that President Jonathan has not informed anyone that he will contest in
2015, his wife was coercing hundreds of hapless women, including those
in uniform, into a show of shame tagged a “peace rally’’, but in
essence, a campaign for President Jonathan ahead of 2015.
“Defying INEC, this brazen campaign
featured women clad in specially-made ‘ankara’ that bore the picture of
President Jonathan and reminds one of the disgraceful days of the late
despot Mobutu Sese Seko of former Zaire, and the late clownish leader of
Uganda, Idi Amin. What a company to keep in the 21st century!
“In what must rank as the first of its
kind in Nigeria, women drawn from various security agencies – the same
that will be expected to provide security for the 2015 elections – were
coerced into a march of shame, as organisers of the campaign,
masquerading as a peace rally ,blocked traffic and prevented citizens
from earning their daily bread.”
The party called on “INEC to mete out
appropriate sanctions to anyone, who has violated its ban on early
campaigns for the 2015 elections, in view of the First Lady-driven
phantom peace rally that is actually a facade for electioneering
campaign, if the electoral umpire’s ban on such campaigns is to be taken
seriously.”
The APC challenged the Presidency’s
image- makers to tell Nigerians why the Peoples Democratic Party had
failed to lift the country in the past 14 years.
Reacting to APC’s allegations on Sunday,
Okupe said, “The first lady never organised a campaign. That (the
rally) was not a campaign. There was nothing PDP in that programme. That
programme was organised by the National Council of Women Societies.
Another aide of Jonathan, the
President’s Special Adviser on Political Matters, Ahmed Gulak, told one
of our correspondents that the women’s rally was to promote peace,
describing opposition to the rally as unpatriotic.
Gulak said, “It is wrong to say that the
rally was for 2015 elections. The rally was for peace. This country
needs peace and anybody or group who is against peace is unpatriotic,
especially with the security challenges in parts of the country.
“On the use of the President’s
photographs on their clothes, President Jonathan is the leader of the
country and that is the reason. That does not mean that they were
campaigning for the President.”
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