The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State has identified the threat to democracy in Nigeria. The party alleged that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s recent tactics to elongate the transition programme as the greatest threat to democracy in the country.
In a statement released in Osogbo, Sunday, by its Director of Publicity, Research and Strategy, Kunle Oyatomi, the APC noted that unless the ruling PDP pulls back from its desperation to stay in power at all costs, “it may self-destruct and in the process, terminate the current democratic dispensation in Nigeria”.
“In a clinical assessment of the actions of the PDP in the last four weeks, which has led to the abortion of February 14 Presidential polls, and in the run up to the new date of March 28 against which the PDP is again flying two dangerously destructive kites,” the statement reads.
Judging from the PDP’s recent moves, the APC claimed it had come to the conclusion that the PDP has become the greatest threat yet to the survival of the current democratic dispensation in Nigeria.
“The foremost leadership of the PDP and its strategic operatives appeared to have lost all sense of caution, responsibility and concern for the survival of democracy in Nigeria and would do any and everything abominable to retain power.
“The PDP is not even bothered that already what it has caused the country, in terms of economic and political instability as a result of its abortion of the February 14 presidential election has patently overheated the polity.
“When the PDP lost the argument of postponement, it used the service chiefs to stage a veritable coup against INEC’s determination to proceed with the exercise thereby aborting power change.
“We have hardly recovered from this treasonable felony when the PDP again raised another dangerous? issue of seeking to have President Jonathan to remove Attahiru Jega in a subversive manner, similar to the removal of the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. But the President’s denial of this was not convincing.
“The PDP is again stoking a number of dangerous issues like, demanding 100% distribution of Permanent Voter Card; calling for the scrapping of the use of card readers in the coming election, and creating an atmosphere of incredulity that has the potential to explode into violence.
“All of this, the APC argued, ‘is a grand design by the PDP to discredit the next elections, even before they hold, and then plunge the country into chaos by rejecting its inevitable defeat at the polls.
“We already see the negative impact, the postponement is having on the Nigerian economy and the value of the naira which the CBN is finding extremely difficult to stabilise,” the APC noted.
“For the PDP to add political turmoil to the avoidable economic instability, its desperation to stay in power has caused, will be the most sinister and unpatriotic disservice that party can inflict on about 180 million Nigerians”.
The APC therefore called on Nigerians to stand firm and prepare to use the power of their votes to remove the PDP from office before the party destroyed democracy.