PDP Accuses APC Of Plot To Impose One-party State

The national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday stated that the All Progressives Congress (APC) was hatching a plot to impose a one-party system in the country. The party, however, said it would cooperate with the president-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, to foster unity and development in the country. Speaking at a pressing conference in Abuja, PDP national publicity secretary, Olisa Metuh, also boasted that PDP would return to power in the next four years. He said: “Our nation and its citizens are facing a serious threat. We are at the verge of a quick slide into dictatorship and the personal freedom we all enjoy today is about to be obliterated.” Metuh claimed that APC had no clear agenda on how to govern the country, According to him, “reports reaching the PDP leadership from across the country show that the APC has been desperately seeking ways to destabilize our ranks and weaken our formations by approaching some senior members of our National Executive Committee (NEC) with phantom promises and threats, ostensibly to use them to inject crisis in our fold and pave the way for our elected members to cross over to APC.
“Furthermore, the PDP has it on good authority that part of this agenda of the APC is to intimidate and harass our members, especially officials who served under our administration.”

The PDP spokesman, however, declared that the PDP leadership, led by Ahmadu Adamu Mu’azu, would not condone any witch-hunt of any of the party’s elected and appointed officers, including state governors, ministers, legislators and others who served with clean records.

“We will do everything humanly possible within the rules to defend democratic principles and ethics, which we have successfully nourished in the past 16 years,” he said.

Metuh pointed to the crisis in Ekiti State Assembly as a foretaste of the destabilizing mission of the APC, which, he said, is generating avoidable political tension in Ekiti and Lagos states.

He noted that the impeachment threat on Fayose was because of his role in Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential campaign. “What is the duty of people who have two months to be in office to destabilise the state. It is immoral and undemocratic for a group of people to put a state into chaos,” Metuh argued.

He observed that Ekiti people would go to the polls on Saturday to elect their legislators and advised the lawmakers against overheating the polity.

He assured that Governor Fayose will be ready to respond to the allegations of the lawmakers if due process is followed. Metuh expressed worry that the situation in the state might lead to violence and called on the president-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari and the APC leadership to intervene and forestall a breakdown of law and order in the state.

He recalled that when PDP lawmakers in Nasarawa State served an impeachment notice on the state governor, Tanko Al-Makura, the presidency and PDP leadership intervened to restore order.

PDP will not challenge Buhari’s victory in court- Metuh Metuh also disclosed that the PDP would not go to court to challenge the outcome of the presidential election.

When asked, Metuh said, “We will not distract Buhari; we will help him to salvage democracy. We will offer APC alternative programmes. We will be the best opposition. We do hope that the opposition will appreciate democracy.” According to him, PDP recognises that there were irregularities in the presidential election, but it had decided that promoting unity was paramount to it. “It is the wish of this party that the president-elect will not be disturbed.

We will not do anything that will disturb him and we will not condone harassment of our members,” he said. On defections by some of its members, Metuh said while it is their right to defect, it was cheap, opportunistic and immoral for someone to defect immediately after the party lost an election, adding that their action showed that such persons lacked the required strength of character the party valued. “I don’t think we are craving fickle-minded members and uncommitted members, no matter the number