APC to PDP: accept your role as opposition party

THE All Progressives Congress (APC) has urged the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to come to terms with the reality that it is now in the opposition.

APC’s National Publicity Secretary Alhaji Lai Mohammed said this in a statement in Abuja yesterday.

 The APC said when the PDP should be strategising about the task ahead, it devoted a substantial part of the communique after the inaugural meeting of its National Working Committee and governors/senators-elect to complaining about alleged harassment and intimidation by the APC.

The party said it showed that the ruling party still did not understand the enormity of the challenges awaiting it as an opposition party.

The statement said the PDP “is scared stiff of being in the opposition”, adding: ‘’We don’t blame it as it has neither the capacity nor the commitment to be in the opposition. A party that stood for nothing but looting and rent collection will naturally be afraid of being in the opposition, where there is nothing to loot or rent to collect.’’

APC advised the PDP to understand that it was not by repeating obvious lies that an opposition party could be effective, “but by being creative, knowledgeable, resourceful and above all credible. It is not by cheap blackmail, but by being resilient”.

It added: ‘’This is why we wish to extend to the National Working Committee of the PDP a free orientation, just as we have offered the party’s spokesman a free crash course on how to be an opposition party spokesman. The theme of the orientation for the PDP NWC members will be ‘transiting from the ruling party to an opposition party’.

‘’In the first instance, there is no substitute for experience. Also, we believe that democracy will be deepened only when there is cooperation between the governing party and the opposition, hence the offer,’’ the party said.

APC slammed the PDP for complaining about harassment and intimidation by the APC, saying if any party was guilty of harassment, intimidation and impunity before, during and after the 2015 elections, it was the PDP.

The statement queried: ‘’Have they so soon forgotten the reckless show of shame by its Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) lackeys with the support of the police in Lagos or the mindless bombings and killings of APC members in Rivers and Gombe states, among others?  Only on Monday, APC supporters were again reportedly killed in Rivers and Kaduna states.

‘’Haven’t the folk in the PDP seen the pictures being circulated of its (PDP) supporters brandishing machetes in broad daylight during the party’s campaign in Aba on Tuesday, April 21?’’

The party described as laughable the allegation by the PDP that the APC was trying to turn the country into a one-party state by luring and making irresistible offers to the leadership of the PDP.

‘’The truth of the matter is that the leadership of the PDP is not even waiting to be approached before fleeing to the APC. PDP leaders and members are falling over themselves shamelessly and swearing undying allegiance to the APC.

“Well, in case they did not get the message of the President-elect and our national chairman, we want to repeat it in blunt terms: PDP leaders and members, you are not welcome in APC. Please stay in your party, but if – as we suspect – you cannot survive in the opposition, then take a walk, quit politics,’’ the party said.

The APC described as blackmail allegation by PDP that it planned to use the Election Petition Tribunals ‘to truncate and subvert the freely given mandate by the people in the states and constituencies’.

‘’No amount of blackmail from the PDP will dissuade us from seeking redress in the Election Petition Tribunals, especially in states where the world knows there were no elections. Since we don’t believe in self-help as the PDP, we see a recourse to the tribunal as a lawful means of giving vent to our rejection of the massive electoral malfeasance and the resort to violence in some states

‘’In case the PDP, beaten and battered by electoral pummelling, has forgotten, the recourse to the tribunals to seek redress is the only lawful means of resolving electoral disputes. Anything else amounts to self-help, which is not our forte,’’ the party said.