Buhari's Unprecedented Divisive And Vindictive Declaration - PDP

 

*Buhari with Kerry (US Secretary of State)

Press Conference By The National Publicity Secretary Of The PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, Today, Sunday, July 26, 2015 At The PDP National Secretariat, Abuja

Gentlemen of the press, we have once again called you up to address a number of very important issues constituting a threat to our democracy, the general health of our nation and our welfare as citizens under the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration.

Last Thursday, our dear President, President Muhammadu Buhari returned from his much-publicised visit to the United States of America. A visit which has proven to be anything but successful, yet another miscarried cosmetic intervention to hide government’s inefficiency and inability to face the real business of governance.

As a responsible political party, committed to peace and the stability of our dear nation, the PDP restrained itself from embarrassing the President by not raising, while he was in the States, issues of harassment of citizens, interferences in the activities of the National Assembly and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), total disregard for tenets of democracy, resort to sole administratorship as well as other violations which have become the order of the day in Nigeria since the inauguration of his administration.

Rather, we remained calm, while hoping and praying that the visit would afford our President and his party leaders reasonable tutorials on the respect and application of the tenets of democracy and fundamental rights of citizens under the rule of law.

This is in addition to the fact that as patriotic citizens, we looked forward for gains especially given our restated support for any action or policy by the Federal Government aimed at stamping out corruption, ending insurgency and promoting economic growth, which formed parts of the publicised agenda for the visit.

However, now that the visit has come and gone, our fear is that nothing whatsoever has been learnt or gained. What we continue to receive as a nation have been embarrassing disagreements, accusations and counter accusations, blames and denials on very important issues due to lack of tact and skill in the management of state matters by the APC-led administration.

*Metuh

It is disheartening that rather than secure any sort of tangible gain for the fight against terrorism, which has lost steam under the APC watch, with insurgents, who were pushed to the verge of surrender by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, now surging back and spreading into the country, we get nothing but exchanges and disagreements between the Presidency and their American hosts. This is not only embarrassing but also worrisome indication of crass ineptitude in the handling of international affairs on the part of the present administration.

We urge the APC-led administration to settle down, put its acts together and get determined, without further excuse, to face the fight against insurgency with every sense of seriousness especially given President Buhari’s promise in his April 2, 2015 CNN interview to end the scourge two months after his inauguration, which is by the end of this month.

Also, while Nigerians awaited for reassuring words to promote our democracy and unity as a nation, they were shocked as they watched President Buhari unfold to the world his decision to administer the country on the basis of the voting pattern in the last general elections rather than on equity as stipulated by the constitution and his oaths of office as the President of Nigeria.

President Buhari told a stunned audience in the US that “constituencies that gave me 97 percent cannot in all honesty be treated, on some issues, with constituencies that gave me 5 percent”, signifying that his government will be discriminatory.

Never in the history of our nation has a president made such a divisive and vindictive declaration. Never in the history of Nigeria has a President made such tendentious, biased and partisan statement, a blade on the chord of unity of his own country and people.

The Plot To Unseat Sen. Ike Ekweremadu

*Ekweremadu

By Dan Amor
We must get the record straight. As Senator Ken Nnamani, the last President of the Fifth Senate and one of the finest legislative minds in the country has asserted, the floor of any chamber of the Nigerian bi-camera legislature is not a party secretariat. So, those calling for the resignation of Senator Ike Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President are enemies of our democracy.

President Muhammadu Buhari was recently quoted as saying that the emergence of Senator Ike Ekweremadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as Deputy Senate President was unacceptable to him and his party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). "I cannot work with enemies of my party— Buhari,” so goes the headline, whatever that means. This position of the President was followed by the alleged invitation of Ekweremadu by the police to be quizzed over the alleged doctoring of the Senate Rules to facilitate his election as Deputy Senate President. It is like the fable of the owl crying in the night and the child dying the following morning.

The reported invasion of the hallowed chamber of the Senate by the police ostensibly to question the Clerk is outrageous, to say the least and must be condemned by all Nigerians who fought the military to a standstill to bring about the current democratic dispensation in 1999.

Did Buhari Release N804.7 Billion Bailout To States From Empty Treasury? - PDP

Press Statement

‘Bailout Fund Savings By Our Governments’ – PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) notes the release of over N804 Billion from the nation’s coffers as bailout to states and local governments across the country.

The party said it believes that the sum will go a long way in alleviating the sufferings of the Nigerians workers in various states of the federation, most of whom have been without their wages for some months.

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh in a statement on Tuesday said the party however “notes that a significant amount of the bailout came from savings accumulated in the Excess Crude Account handed over to the Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC)’s administration by the past PDP-led administration.

APC Is Deceiving Buhari By Parading Voodoo Achievements – PDP

Text Of Press Conference By The PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, On Wednesday, July 1, 2015 At The PDP National Secretariat Abuja

*Metuh

As you are aware, today marks exactly thirty-two days of the inauguration of a new administration under the APC, which was elected into power over three months ago on the basis of their numerous promises to the Nigerian people.

Even though this government has continued to plead for patience, we are worried that indications from President Muhammadu Buhari and his party do not inspire desired confidence in the citizenry that they are adequately equipped and ready to chart a direction for the enormous challenges of governance.

In the last one month, instead of a journey to change as they claim, all we have witnessed are avoidable tension, wrangling within the ruling party, disruption of legislative activities in our National Assembly, painful economic stagnation, pronouncement of voodoo achievements and overall uncertainty in the polity all due to the apparent inability of our respected President to provide leadership.

*Buhari

We have a President and a party that have since thirty–two days been unable to decide on rudimentary appointments such as Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Chief of Staff to the President, ministers and his demand for 15 Special Advisers as approved by the PDP controlled Seventh Assembly since June 5, 2015.

North In Conspiracy Against The Yoruba –Bisi Akande

Statement Issued On Sunday, June 28, 2015, By The Former Interim Chairman Of The All Progressive Congress (APC), Bisi Akande 

Some times in 2013, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) resolved to merge and set up a merger committee to work out the modality for gluing together as one political party under one name, one constitution and one manifesto. A splinter of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) sought to be included in the merger. An application made to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to this end by All Progressives Congress (APC) National Interim Committee, composed of ACN, ANPP, CPC, and factions of APGA and Democratic People’s Party (DPP) was approved in July, 2013.

Between Bola Ahmed Tinubu (an ACN leader) and Kashim Imam (a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader), the idea came up and was adopted that the new party should embark on a membership recruitment drive to certain PDP governors, whose main agenda was to see President Goodluck Jonathan out of power. The recruitment efforts took APC leaders to Rivers, Kwara, Niger, Sokoto, Kano, Jigawa and Adamawa states. Eventually, five PDP governors of Sokoto, Kano, Adamawa, Kwara and Rivers, together with the majority of their PDP National and State Assemblies members and other PDP National Assembly members from Gombe, Bauchi and Nasarawa, under the banner of the new-PDP, joined the APC.

The APC thereafter organised membership registrations in all the over 120,000 polling units and followed up by using these registered members to conduct congresses in all the almost 8000 wards, in over 770 local governments, in all the 36 states (including Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and a convention at the National level, thereby creating one united APC party structure all over Nigeria. With this air of oneness, APC went ahead to conduct primaries to select candidates for state governors and Houses of Assembly and for the presidency and the National Assemblies.

How Will History Treat Governor Rotimi Amaechi?

By Nnaemeka Oruh 

In a statement sent out after President Jonathan conceded defeat to General Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria's former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, made an assertion which will continue to reverberate through history.He said of Jonathan: "History will be kind to you". It was a ringing endorsement of the selflessness of the outgoing president.

*Gov Amaechi

Passing a judgement on Govenor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi on the other hand presents a conundrum. Lauded in some parts of Nigeria (especially outside Rivers State) as democracy's stand up guy owing to his battles against President Jonathan, and his monumental support of the incoming 'saintly' president, Amaechi comes across as the proverbial father who does more for outsiders than his own family members.

APC Should Face The Real Issues

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Recently, the Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Mr. John Oyegun, was quoted as saying that he was “sad” that his party could not produce a lawmaker from the South East to be elected as senate president or speaker of the House of Representatives when the new national assembly would be inaugurated in June. This was because during the last elections, the APC performed so poorly in the South East that it was unable to win a single seat in the two houses of the national assembly in the region. 

*Bola Tinubu, Muhammadu Buhari and John

  Oyegun 

Ordinarily, this should have been an exclusive problem of the APC, but given the way Mr. Oyegun spoke, someone might be deluded into thinking that some really monumental tragedy had hit the South East – for which the people of the area should be in deep mourning by now. 

Since the presidential election which the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Attahiru Jega, told us was won by the APC’s General Muhammadu Buhari, one has lost count of articles ecstatically celebrating how the “wrong voting” of majority of South Easterners has now put the zone to a “great disadvantage.”

Some solutions have also been “kindly” proffered by quite a number of people to “help” the South East out of its predicament, like the very absurd suggestion that a senator-elect from Enugu State should decamp to the APC so he could become the senate president; or even the much more off-putting call on a female Senator-elect from Anambra State to step down for the APC candidate she defeated, since the man is a “very good material” for the senate presidency. One could go on and on, but what is of concern here is that Mr. Oyegun’s assertion would seem to have somewhat elevated these clearly pedestrian views and clothed them with the false robe of serious discourse.

From These Ashes Nigeria Shall Rise Again

Shed Your Own Blood, Mr. Politician!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Whenever Nigerian politicians threaten that blood would flow if they lose in an election, what they always have in mind is not their own blood or that of their children and wives.  Even their distant relations and friends do not figure in their calculations.

*Post-election violence: who dies? (pix: salon)

What they have in mind is the blood of grossly impoverished Nigerians (people totally unfamiliar and unrelated to them whose death or impairment would not interfere with their happiness, assuming they even get to hear of it) whom they believe they would always be able to easily brainwash and deceive with dirty naira notes to unleash violence. These sometimes waste their lives in the service of those selfish and ultra-callous politicians who do not even place the slightest hint of worth on the lives of other Nigerians. These politicians have also learnt to deploy two usually highly reliable intoxicants, namely, ethnicity and godless religion, to confuse and blur the reasoning of the people and lure them into the streets to embrace their wasteful deaths.

2015 Nigerian Elections: Jonathan Will Not Win!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

                                                      

It is my considered opinion that President Goodluck Jonathan will not win the February 14, 2015 presidential election. But then, he will NOT also lose. And if Jonathan is declared winner after the votes had been cast and counted, it would not be because the people voted massively for him. It would be that Nigerians trooped out to overwhelmingly vote against the All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari. 

*Jonathan

Although, President Jonathan has performed far better than his predecessors in office, especially, his arch-critic, former President Olusegun Obasanjo (who went all out to impoverish and ground the country despite the unprecedented earnings that poured into the treasury during his tenure from oil exports) and whose regime brazenly institutionalized corruption (thereby, proving that it was indeed possible to beat the solid record left by the Ibrahim Babangida military regime), what cannot be  denied is that Jonathan could have done far better than he has done. But, sadly, the APC whose candidate is Jonathan’s major challenger is just incapable of inspiring confidence. Although labouring to present themselves as the “face of change,” the APC people only succeed in making Jonathan more appealing to the people by the way they conduct themselves and their campaign.

And despite all the resources and efforts the party has deployed to market itself as an alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it has only succeeded in solidifying the egregious impression that it is nothing other than the PDP’s dustbin, where mostly frustrated and disgruntled PDP members seek refuge and are heartily received no matter their past records.

Nigeria’s Dangerous 2015 Elections: Limiting the Violence

By International Crisis Group 

Africa Report N°220



21 November 2014

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Nigeria’s presidential, parliamentary and state gubernatorial and assembly elections, scheduled for February 2015, will be more contentious than usual. Tensions within and between the two major political parties, competing claims to the presidency between northern and Niger Delta politicians and along religious lines, the grim radical Islamist Boko Haram insurgency and increasing communal violence in several northern states, along with inadequate preparations by the electoral commission and apparent bias by security agencies, suggest the country is heading toward a very volatile and vicious electoral contest. If this violent trend continues, and particularly if the vote is close, marred or followed by widespread violence, it would deepen Nigeria’s already grave security and governance crises. The government, its agencies and all other national figures must work urgently to ensure that the vote is not conducted in an explosive situation as this could further destabilise the country.

President Jonathan with Vice-President Sambo 
and PDP Chairman, Muazu

Nigerian elections are traditionally fiercely contested, but in 2015, risks of violence are particularly high. This will be the first nationwide contest essentially between two parties – the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) – since the return to civilian rule in 1999. While a genuine contest is a welcome sign of progress for Nigeria’s democracy (thanks to the emergence last year of the APC, a merger of the four largest opposition parties), increasingly acrimonious relations between the two parties could engender even fiercer clashes among their supporters once campaigning formally starts in December.

Why I Quit The Presidential Race - Tambuwal

By Aminu Waziri Tambuwal 

A few days ago, precisely on Friday the 14th of November,2014 a group of friends, associates, colleagues and admirers cutting across all ages, ethnic, social, religious, political and geographical divides presented to me the Expression of Interest and Nomination forms for me to participate in the presidential primaries of the All Progressive Congress (APC) for the 2015 Presidential Election. 

On that auspicious occasion, being profoundly humbled, I requested for a little more time to conclude my last round of the series of nationwide consultations which indeed I was just about to conclude.

Let me state that the 14th November event was neither an accidental nor sudden happenstance, rather it was another high point of similar goodwill surprises I had experienced in the last two years when I started receiving in audience, colleagues, individuals, groups and delegations of prominent Nigerians on this subject matter

I wish to seize this occasion to commend, most highly, these patriotic and selfless colleagues, admirers, individuals and groups for their sacrifice, diligence and single-mindedness in the pursuit of what they honestly believe is in the best interest of our fatherland. I am fully aware of the physical, financial and intellectual resources all of you have expended in this regard besides the sheer volume of valuable time and the travel risk of crisscrossing to compare notes and confirm projections. Indeed I can not thank you enough.

Nigeria: Glamourisation Of Political Prostitution

By Dan Amor

It is a sickening reality in Nigeria that defection, the act of leaving one political party for another, also called carpet-crossing, or what the eminent poet and humorist, Uzor Maxim-Uzoatu called “Jumpology” (the political act of jumping from party to party), has been elevated to the height of a national ideology.

*Nuhu Ribadu, Murtala Nyako and Atiku Abubakar 

(pix:pointblanknews)

This glamourisation of political prostitution by Nigerian politicians signals the death of commonsense. Before the December 2013 defection of 37 members of the House of Representatives elected on the platform of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in an open show and fanfare, four PDP governors had led the way in a much more rehearsed, media pampered braggadocio in November 2013. Many Nigerians believed that despite the larger implications of the defection with regards to the 2015 political permutations, nothing had really changed. Nigerians who are no longer shocked or surprised at the sheer ingenuity of the defection gale which has seen some politicians changing parties more than they change their agbada, have unanimously called for a stop to this wayward political culture.

Buhari And APC’s N27.5 Million Nomination Forms

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Exactly two weeks ago (Thursday, October 16, 2014), the All Progressives Congress (APC) startled decent Nigerians when its national chairman, Mr. John Odigie-Oyegun, announced that the party put the cost of its expression of interest and nomination forms at the cost of N27.5 million in order “to separate the men from the boys.” Another way of saying this is: ‘to separate the wheat from the chaff!’

*Buhari

This statement which almost immediately reverberated across the nation through various blogs and television screens was widely reported in the papers the next day, Friday, October 17. As I write now (about 48 hours after it echoed in Abuja ), neither the APC nor its national chairman has even attempted to “clarify” the very unwholesome assertion or withdraw it in its entirety. This can only mean, therefore, that the party solidly stands by such an outrageous and unsettling statement by its topmost officer. What a sad, tragic development.

Now, to describe a grown man as a “boy” is to dismissively imply that he is immature, inexperienced, inadequate or, worse, irresponsible. And so, going by the statement of the APC chairman, the ability to roll out millions of naira is what qualifies somebody to be a “man” in the party. In other words, even if you are generously endowed with superlative moral, intellectual and managerial   abilities, as long as you are not a multi-millionaire or have multi-millionaire friends who can throw the millions on your behalf, you are in the “progressive” thinking of the APC a mere “boy” – immature and irresponsible, and, therefore, not qualified to contest a responsible position on the platform of the party! 

For a party that has unduly strained itself to persuade Nigerians that it represents a healthy alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), this is indeed a most devastating disclosure and horrendous disappointment! What this, once again, demonstrates very clearly is that whereas the APC has deployed enormous efforts to tell Nigerians how bad the PDP is, it has been most unsuccessful in its attempt to allay growing fears (and conceal the stubbornly reoccurring indications) that it is, perhaps, even worse than the PDP.  

PDP Faults Buhari's Claims On State Of The Nation

Press Release 

PDP Welcomes Buhari To Presidential Race Faults His Claims 

On State Of The Nation

The Peoples Democratic Party is pleased to welcome to the 2015 presidential contest, the former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari who declared his intention today, Wednesday, October 15, 2014.

*Buhari

While we congratulate and wish him well in his ambition, we have noted some distortions and misrepresentation of facts in his speech and consequently wish to put the record straight.

Tom Ikimi’s Lengthy Chronicle Of Falsehoods

By Bola Tinubu 

I ordinarily would not have responded to Tom Ikimi’s lengthy chronicle of falsehoods, cheap blackmail and abuse. My only reason for this response is that I know Tom Ikimi’s style. He subscribes to the view that no matter how unbelievable a lie may sound if you brazenly assert it and repeat it often enough you may persuade many that it is in fact true.  I have seen Ikimi perpetrate this deviousness in his years in public life. 

*Tinubu

1. Regarding Ikimi’s bid for the Chairmanship of the Party. It was clear to practically everyone who had the interest of the party at heart that we simply could not have a man of Tom Ikimi’s antecedents as Chair of the party. As chairman of the NRC, one of the only two political parties in the country under the military transition programme, Tom Ikimi not only connived with the then military regime to annul the elections, terminate the democratic process and sell off his party. 

He became Abacha’s foreign minister, convincing the world that heinous state murders like the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa were just acts! If Ikimi were the Chair of APC the party would have to sleep with both eyes open lest its chairman sell off the party before day break. No matter what anyone may say about me it is unlikely that I can be accused of supporting incompetent or morally light-weight individuals for important political positions.