The Peoples Democratic Party on Friday
described Thursday’s claims by the All Progressives Congress that the
PDP and the Presidency were not cooperating in the transition process as
diversionary and unnecessary.
The party charged the APC to put its house in order instead of trying to shift blames about the confusion within its ranks.
This was contained in a statement signed
by PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh. He said
contrary to what the APC would want Nigerians to believe, the meetings
of the transition and inauguration committees of both parties had been
going on fruitfully.
Metuh said the PDP wondered where the
false alarm that the President Jonathan’s transition committee had yet
to meet that of the incoming President, Maj. Gen. Mohammadu Buhari, was
coming from “if not a measure of the confusion in the APC camp.”
Metuh said, “While we understand Alhaji
Lai Mohammed’s excitement in the euphoria of his party’s unexpected
victory, we view the APC’s provocative statement, especially the
unguarded invectives on the Presidency and PDP as an unfortunate display
of arrogance and falsehood ostensibly aimed at heating up the system
and creating room to cover for its inadequacies thereby inventing
excuses for any failure in office.
“We can confirm that the APC Transition
Committee led by Mallam Ahmed Joda has met at least twice with the
Presidency team led by Vice-President Namadi Sambo while the Timipre
Sylva-led APC inauguration committee has been meeting almost on a daily
basis with the PDP team led by the Secretary to the Government of the
Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim.
“It is therefore most uncharitable for
the APC to attempt to mislead the people by claiming that the PDP-led
Presidency was not cooperating in the process.”
He explained that although the ruling
party suffered some electoral setback, Nigerians were witness to the
fact that the PDP had remained humble in defeat while focusing on
rebuilding and reinventing itself. Such should not in any way warrant
the unnecessary attacks, vituperations and insults from the APC.
Metuh noted that as the PDP looks up from
the lowest level it had ever fallen, its members were fully determined
to start the process of ascending back to an acceptable level in
earnest.
The APC, he said, must therefore, learn
to be decent and cease to be arrogant as that would amount to taking the
goodwill of the people for granted.
The PDP spokesperson also said what
should be of more concern to an in-coming government like APC was the
negative signals and the rising worries by Nigerians over its flip-flops
and apparent nervousness of its President-elect who had started
reneging on his campaign promises.
He said, “Nigerians were bewildered when
they heard General Buhari renege on his messianic posture and told them
in clear terms not to expect him to rapidly fix the problems of the
nation as he had promised during the campaign.
“The same President-elect who boldly
stated in his campaign manifesto that ‘I, Muhammadu Buhari have resolved
that the task ahead of me is that of securing our nation and prospering
our people, not looking backward to the failed policies and promises’
had on May 5, 2015 in a meeting with APC governor-elects reneged and
announced that he had “started nervously to explain to people that Rome
was not built in a day.”
The PDP also chided the APC for denying a
pledge made by the President-elect to deal with the Boko Haram
insurgency within two months. It recalled that Buhari made the pledge in
an interview he had with Christiane Amanpour on CNN on April 2, 2015.
The outgoing ruling party advised the
incoming administration to be mindful of the fact that Nigerians had
kept a list of campaign promises made by the APC and were preparing to
hold them to account should they falter.
The PDP statement partly read: “Nigerians
are not in a hurry to forget that the APC promised to rapidly fix the
economy, generate, transmit and distribute electricity on a 24/7 basis,
pay N5,000 monthly to 25 million poor Nigerians; provide allowances to
the discharged but unemployed Youth Corps members for Twelve (12)
months, create additional four million new homes, provide free education
and meals for school children and bring naira to the same value with
the dollar.”
In response, the National Publicity
Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, insisted that the President-
elect’s transition committee had yet to meet with President Jonathan’s
team. He told Saturday PUNCH in a telephone interview that it was unfortunate that the PDP was trying to stand logic on its head.
He said, “I am a member of the APC
transition committee, we are 19 in number and we have yet to meet face
to face with the PDP team.
“There are 19 members of the President-
elect’s transition committee; we don’t know how many their members are
but the truth is that we have never as a committee sat down with the
President’s team for once.
“That our chairman has met the
Vice-President with the company of the secretary and two of our members,
does four equate with 19?
“As we are speaking, not one single page
of handover note has been given to us. Does he (Metuh) know what
cooperation is? As we speak, the President-elect’s transition committee
has met for 10 days but we have never met with the outgoing President’s
team.”
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