The All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of breaching the peace accord it entered into last week with its violent attack on APC’s flagbearer, Gen Muhammadu Buhari.
A statement issued by APC’s Director of Strategic Communications, Mr. Dele Alake, the party stated that PDP’s desperate attempt to demonize Buhari contradicts the peace accord entered into by the political parties.
“It is shocking that rather than explain itself over the multiple crises it has engendered or has failed to respond to; or offer panaceas to these challenging troubles, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidates and spokesmen have stuck to the tactics of demonizing the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, using all sorts of red herrings, abuses, foul temper to whip up hatred against his person,” the statement said.
Alake pointed to the attempt by the PDP’s spokesmen to paint Buhari black with the allegation of corruption and favouritism during Buhari’s days as the chairman of the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) and the orchestrated attempt to link him with the activities of Boko Haram.
“But a few days ago, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was supposed to have commissioned the investigation into the PTF activities, disclosed that he was in possession of the report and nothing untoward was established against the APC candidate.
“To the astonishment of all right thinking persons, the PDP has chosen not to believe in the authority of President Obasanjo who ordered the investigation and has final say on it, but prefers to allege that the man who has the fact is dead! Can there be a worse tragicomedy than this? Who really is fooling who?
“It is true Gen. Buhari ruled as a military Head of State. But it must also be acknowledged that General Olusegun Obasanjo also once ruled as a military Head of State. Yet, that did not prevent the PDP from nominating and presenting him as its presidential candidate in 1999 and 2003 general elections.
“Gen. Buhari was himself a victim of Boko Haram attack, and has also lost some relatives to the sect’s violent activities. He has denounced the sect, and has signified his preparedness to take on the militants on a much firmer and intelligent basis than President Jonathan has done in four years,” the statement read in parts.
APC urged PDP and its hatchet men to focus on the main issues and proffer solution to the challenges facing the country and stop the aggressive attack on the person of Buhari.
“It is clear that President Jonathan’s aides, ministers and hatchet writers base nearly all their accusations against Gen. Buhari on his period as military head of state. They have nothing on him since then, except fishing for other commentators’ views on the retired General; views that were either politically inspired or else taken out of context. The PDP refuses to acknowledge that the times have changed and that the dynamics of Nigerian politics and the grave challenges of the moment have made the APC candidate’s style, views and discipline precisely the pressing need of the moment.
“The fact is that the PDP has consistently avoided the main issues of this campaign. Apparently, it has no answers to them. The party prefers to focus on personal attacks, dreg up unsubstantiated records of the General during his military rule, make wild imputations of his motives, and label him atrociously in order to hang him. Nigerians, happily, have recognized that the country has little time left to tackle the grave economic collapse facing it, and the even more critical security challenges threatening the entire country. The country is rallying to the side of the APC, to the side of Gen Buhari, and to the side of posterity. This is an idea whose time has come, which no one can stop, not even with all the abuses possible and all the tendentiousness the PDP can muster,” the statement noted.
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