APC TELLS PDP TO EITHER REBRAND OR GO DOWN

Alhaji Lai Mohammed, National Publicity Secretary, APC

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has dismissed the communiqué issued by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) National Caucus on the so-called political devel­opments in the nation as a rehash of the opposition party’s infantile whining which will not save it from going down unless it re­brands most urgently.

“It is time for the PDP to take a long, hard look at itself in the mirror and change everything that is ugly about the party, in­stead of wasting its energy and time on irrelevancies,” the party said in a state­ment issued in Lagos on Friday by its National Pub­licity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.

It said the PDP cannot continue to do things in its trademark old, crooked ways and expect a different result.

“’The PDP just doesn’t get it, despite being the ar­chitect of its own fall from power. The days of winning elections with the aid of slush funds, brigandage, deceit and rigging are gone forever, hence the PDP must return to the drawing board to fashion out decent and empirical ways of re­packaging and selling itself to Nigerians, just like the opposition did when they decided to come together,” APC said.

The party said the PDP’s ceaseless and ill-advised at­tack on the judiciary, now its favourite whipping boy, the endless put-down of government agencies and the demonization of every­one but itself will fetch the party nothing but political grief.

“Instead of a blanket and unsubstantiated accu­sation against the judiciary over the election petition tribunal rulings in Rivers and Akwa Ibom, the PDP would have shown itself to be a serious party if it had provided statistics on how many of the cases filed at the various election peti­tion tribunals nationwide, after the 2015 elections, have so far been decided in favour of the PDP and the APC, so that Nigerians can see whether the PDP has not won any single petition or whether all the cases have been won by the APC.

“The PDP has forgotten that the same judiciary that it is willfully castigating today had decided many election petitions in favour of the party and against the APC, whether at the Gover­norship, National Assem­bly or State Assembly lev­els, and the ruling party has not opted to bring the whole house crashing down on ev­eryone just because of that.

“Going down the memo­ry lane, when the PDP took itself to court in 2007 over the Governorship election in Rivers, the same judi­ciary that has now become an apparition to the PDP awarded the Governorship to a candidate who never even featured on the ballot because the party crook­edly substituted his name. Then, the PDP did not see the judiciary as being used by the then PDP Admin­istration, neither did the opposition castigate the ju­diciary,” it said.

APC admonished the PDP to stop yowling and en­gage in strategic thinking that could propel the party forward, rather than con­tinue to be nostalgic about its past, which is neither dignifying nor enlivening.

“The 16 years of the PDP – which the party has continued to shamelessly celebrate – are nothing to celebrate, either for the im­punity that characterized the party’s governance, the massive looting of the na­tional treasury that is still being assessed or the bas­tardization of all the values that the nation holds dear. Thankfully, President Muhammadu Buhari has brought sanity to gover­nance even as the PDP has continued to try to distract him with their endless wailing.

“Our parting word for the PDP: Stop throwing juvenile tantrums against everyone, especially the ju­diciary. Stop wasting your energy on frivolous accusa­tions. Learn how to commu­nicate your thoughts to Ni­gerians in a more civilized way and put your shoulder to the wheel if you want to reincarnate as a force to be reckoned with in our coun­try’s political firmament,” APC said. (nationalmirror)