The war of words between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) continued wednesday with the opposition party accusing the ruling party of plotting a coup against democracy in Nigeria.
The PDP said it would not allow the coup to stand, in spite of the alleged orchestration of violence, killings and seizure of electoral processes by the APC.
It added that no amount of blackmail, innuendos, threats and direct attacks by the APC would make it to drop its demands for electoral reforms that would return the country to the democratic practice that engenders respect for the rights of the citizens for free, fair, clean, clear and credible elections.
The party in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, accused APC of waging a blackmail war against the PDP as part of its diversionary tactics to enable it to sustain its coup against democracy through the “use of state apparatus of power and paid hoodlums to unleash brute force, arbitrary arrests, bloodletting and killings to terrorise and suppress Nigerians, snatch their franchise and continue to seize power with impunity.”
It recalled how the APC allegedly used firearm to seize power in Ekiti State in 2018; unleashed cudgels in the March 2019 governorship election in Kano and allegedly unleashed violence on the people in the November 2019 governorship and senatorial elections in Bayelsa and Kogi States.
It also accused APC of annexing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), altering election results, violating constitutional provisions and threatening institutions of democracy such as political parties, the judiciary and civil society groups.
According to PDP, “Such impunity, violations and political brigandage are not part of the tenets of democracy and Nigerians, who have become disillusioned, have continued to express their disenchantment for such bloodstained political process.”
PDP said the silence of the police hierarchy to the use of police helicopter to attack voters in Kogi State as well as the failure to parade those said to have been arrested for the burning of a PDP Women Leader, Mrs. Salome Abuh, only pointed to suspicions of conspiracy at very high places.
PDP said the APC’s ultimate design was to use violence, intimidation, attacks, blackmail and threats against the PDP to frighten Nigerians and scare them from participating in the electoral processes so it could foist a one-party state on the people.
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It also accused the APC of being averse to electoral reform so it could achieve its alleged sinister agenda of a one-party “despotic regime.”
However, the main opposition party warned the APC that such alleged plots against the people would not stand because Nigerians would never accept a one-party system with its attendant despotic proclivities.
The APC, it said, should, therefore, perish the dream of imposing a one-party state as well as its distortions that the PDP would not participate in the Edo and Ondo governorship elections.
“Such ignoble script cannot succeed as the PDP remains the corner stone of Nigerians’ participation in the democratic order; hence our unshaken resolve to stand with the people on the insistence for electoral reforms in our country,” PDP said.
THISDAY
