Elections must hold in North-East, PDP insists The leadership of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on Wednesday, insisted that the forthcoming general election must hold in the crisis- ridden North-East states as scheduled despite the security challenges in the zone. As of today, three out of the six states in the zone namely Adamawa, Borno and Yobe are under emergency. This came just as the party challenged the All Progressives Congress (APC) to a public debate over the achievements of the PDP- led Federal Government since 1999 till date,saying the main opposition had no meaningful programme for Nigeria. The National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, who made the position of the party known while speaking on a live radio programme monitored by the Nigerian Tribune in Abuja, on Wednesday, insisted that there was no reason elections would not be held in such areas as being agitated in some quarters. According to him, “after all, these states which are being controlled by the opposition have successfully conducted council elections at the peak of insurgency while bye-elections to the state and national assemblies were held during the period,so,what are they saying?.” “If the state governors in the affected states have been alive to their responsibilities as being done by the PDP controlled Federal Government, the situation would have been brought under control,rather they are busy attacking the president and our party as responsible for the insecurity and that elections will not hold in the affected states,elections must hold and PDP will spring surprises,’’ he declared. “That is a shallow and callous thinking from the opposition, how can the president be sponsoring crisis in a country he is presiding, even the president made it clear on several occasions that his presidential ambition does not deserve the blood of any Nigerian. President Goodluck Jonathan is a refined gentle man who will never have such a sinister motive against anybody or his fatherland.” According to him, ‘‘what is regrettable is that those leading members of the main opposition, the APC, that are making unguarded utterances against the president and the PDP were former members of our party who got to where they are today on our platform before they defected. One of them even said if APC did not win the 2015 presidential election, they will not go to court but will go and form a parallel government. “We have made our position known in our press statement of Wednesday that enough is enough, PDP will no longer tolerate such barbaric attacks again, if any one of them tries again,we will go out in full swing and expose such a character,” Metuh threatened. On the position of the Party over the defection of the Speaker of the House of Representatives,Metuh said that it was an issue that bordered on moral,integrity and Constitutional matters for Nigerians to decide and more so that the matter was already before Court. Speaking on the allegation by the APC that the Police personnel aided thugs to invade the National Assembly last week to harass its law makers’ members,Metuh dismissed the allegation and urged the members of the public to wait for the outcome of the police investigation into the alleged invasion. “What are they trying to say again? National Assembly members belong to different political parties and how can one identify their political parties,to the best of my knowledge they don’t wear uniforms and how did APC come to a conclusion that their members were the target? Metuh who urged Nigerians to disregard all the propaganda and blackmail of the APC,saying,”APC is not a better opposition we need in the country,it is out to derail our growing democracy,we have said before and we are saying it again and we will continue to say it”.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 20:06:13 +0000
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