N5,000 Stipend: APC Senators Acting Party Script, Says PDP

• Faults ruling party’s bandwagon argument on Borno by-election

By Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described Wednesday’s rejection by the All Progressives Congress senators of the N5,000 monthly stipend which their party promised Nigerians during the last electioneering, as a conspiracy to ensure its non-implementation.

The opposition party said the move underscores the monumental hypocrisy of the APC  in getting to power by means of deceit and false promises to Nigerians.

A statement issued on Thursday by the  PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh,  said the development is a clear confirmation of the fact that the APC is a party of hypocrites, who never had the intentions of honouring any of their campaign promises.

“The PDP declares that it is absolutely obvious to all that the APC came to power riding on monumental lies and deceit in making promises they had no intentions to keep. All they wanted was to get into power and they achieved this with their lying tongues.

“Indeed, the unanimity displayed by the APC senators in rejecting the promised N5, 000 monthly welfare package, especially coming after their party and the presidency had made futile efforts to distance themselves from it, further stresses the duplicitous spirit of the APC and its reprehensible insensitivity to the feelings and aspirations of Nigerians, especially the unsuspecting youths, women and the indigent, who they shamelessly swindled with false promises.

Olisah Metuh

“From the foregoing therefore, Nigerians should not expect any sincere action from the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC government on the other promises including monthly allowance to discharged but unemployed NYSC members, free meals and scholarship to school children, free houses, bringing the naira to the same value with the dollar.

“Our position remains that the APC has sufficiently confirmed to the world that they have a lot to learn on the leadership values of honesty, integrity, credibility and forthrightness.

“Finally, we invite Nigerians to note the powers amply vested on them by the constitution under a democracy as we urge them to stand on such powers and hold the APC and its government accountable for all their campaign promises,” he said.

The opposition party also dismissed as hollow, fallacious and completely out of point, argument by the APC in attempting to use the outcome of the 2015 general election as a premise to claim victory in last Saturday’s Borno Central senatorial by-election.

It said the APC, by such argument, might as well forget about contesting the December 5 governorship election in Bayelsa State where the ruling PDP won all contested positions in the 2015 general election.

The party said the APC in its desperation had failed to realise that the people are no longer excited about the fake change it offered and that a space of six months is more than enough for the electorate to turn against a political party that has failed in office.

“The scandalous resort by the APC to use security forces to frighten and intimidate voters and electoral officers to sway votes in its favour, in addition to other ploys made to set the stage for violence in the process, clearly corroborate the fact that it has already lost its support base in the country and particularly in the North.

“We are aware that the APC is already stretching its desperation to Kogi as well as Bayelsa State where, in the attempt to create tension, unleashed thugs on the campaign train of Governor Seriake Dickson on Tuesday, an action that is a clear test-run of their machinery of violence ahead of the Bayelsa December 5 election.

“Intelligence report available to us shows that this brazen attack on Governor Dickson was not spontaneous but part of a well-hatched plot to create an atmosphere of insecurity in the state, ostensibly to pave way for their violence-driven rigging strategy, including the deployment of APC controlled security forces to frighten and intimidate voters as was the case in the Borno by-election.

“The PDP wishes to state in clear terms that it would resist any attempt by the APC to derail the peaceful conduct of the November 21 and December 5 governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states respectively.  It is on this note that we call on President Muhammadu Buhari, as the leader of the nation and a huge beneficiary of the credible election organized by the PDP, to take immediate steps to rein-in his members, as their actions in Bayelsa State are capable of triggering a resurgence of militancy in the Niger Delta region.

“Let the APC be amply reminded that Bayelsa and Kogi States are clear strongholds of the PDP and no amount of intimidation, threats and use of force will bend the will of the people or detract from their support for Governors Seriake Dickson and Idris Wada respectively. Moreover, the people of these states are not in anyway ready or willing to accept any results that do not, in full measure, reflect their wishes and aspirations at the polls.”

N5,000 Stipend: APC Senators Acting Party Script, Says PDP