Politics

APC to Atiku: Leave Us Out of Your Predicament

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has called on the Presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 elections, Atiku Abubakar, to concentrate on repairing his damaged political psyche and attempt to revive the comatose PDP and leave APC out of their combined predicament.

National Publicity Secretary of the party, Felix Morka, in a statement, said the party welcomed the former Vice President’s charge to opposition political parties to rally together to engage in opposition politics.

Morka, said this while reacting to a statement credited to Atiku that Nigeria was sliding into a one-party state and accused the ruling party of increasingly “turning Nigeria into a dictatorship of one party” during the hosting of the National Executive Council of the Inter-Party Advisory Council of Nigeria (IPAC) on Tuesday.

He noted that it was pitiful that a statesman of Atiku’s standing would so easily conflate the wide acceptance of APC among Nigerians with his “irrational fear” of one-party dictatorship.

The spokesperson reminded Atiku that Nigerians were highly percipient and could differentiate between political deviance of PDP and demonstrable commitment of APC to deepening democracy and fostering our common good.

Morka stressed that before PDP’s defeat in 2015, it proclaimed and flaunted its plan to rule Nigeria for a minimum of 60 years, saying at that time, Atiku was willfully blind to fear of a PDP one-party dictatorship, but now appears to be under the influence of a distorted vision inflicted by the debilitating serial trouncing of his party at the polls.

He noted that the PDP brigandage, impunity and profligacy of 16 years remained unforgettable, adding that during APC’s brief period at the helm, it has implemented far-reaching reform of the Electoral Act and introduced technological innovations, including the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) all aimed at improving electoral transparency and deepening our democracy.

Morka said: “We urge Atiku to concentrate on repairing his damaged political psyche and attempt to revive his comatose PDP and leave APC out of their combined predicament. However, we welcome the former Vice President’s charge to opposition political parties to rally together to engage in opposition politics.

“Remarkably, Atiku and his PDP have not only consistently failed at the polls, they have proved incapable of offering a credible alternative political vision as expected of an opposition party. Instead, the PDP has sustained its free fall into the abyss of quicksand by its intractable internal contradictions and impoverished leadership.”

Adedayo Akinwale