The All Progressives Congress has described President Goodluck Jonathan as Nigeria’s number one enemy because of what the party called the President’s “propensity to perpetrate impunity, abuse federal institutions and tolerate corruption, all in a dangerous clamour to win re-election at all costs.”
In a statement in Osogbo on Wednesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said under Jonathan’s watch, Nigeria had been thrown into “unprecedented crisis” in the opposition strongholds of Rivers, Edo, Adamawa and Nasarawa states and elsewhere across the country. It said, “The President has also abused national institutions perhaps more than any other President in Nigeria’s history, deploying the police and the army to intimidate and harass ordinary citizens in general and opposition supporters in particular, as he did recently in Ekiti and he is allegedly planning to do in Osun State; shutting airports at will just to punish the opposition and muscling the electoral commission, INEC, to prevent incorruptible RECs from conducting elections.
”As we write, there are contrived crises in Rivers and Edo, where a handful of lawmakers, with the backing of higher authorities, have been terrorising the Houses of Assembly in their states and defying court orders at will, with the ultimate prize for the renegades being the states’ chief executives. There is also crisis in Adamawa, where an impeachment plot has been undoubtedly instigated and hatched by higher authorities, despite tepid denials, and soldiers have been deployed to cage in very high state officials.
”In Ekiti, several billions of Naira was allegedly scooped from a massive political war chest to subvert democracy, induce voters and upturn all known political theories to such an extent that all that anyone seeking to be elected now has to do is to dole out stolen public funds to a people already rendered comatose and impoverished by runaway corruption, glaring incompetence and sheer cluelessness that are the hall marks of the Jonathan Administration.”
APC added, ”Under President Jonathan, there is no longer the need to make any electoral promises or carry out people-oriented and quality of life projects. Just distribute bags of rice, expired or not, to a people already famished by a clueless Federal Government, and tuck in a few naira notes into the pockets of the electorate who have been deliberately impoverished. This is a clear subversion of democracy.
”With such huge funds now being allegedly channeled to Osun to thwart the will of the people ahead of the August 9 governorship election, in an attempt to repeat the Ekiti ‘experiment,’ which the PDP-led Federal Government deemed to have been a ‘success’, it is now clear the Jonathan Administration will not pull any punches in subverting democracy ahead of the 2015 general elections.
”It is also clear now what happened to theN 20bn oil money that went missing, as well as the reason behind the massive oil
subsidy fraud, the Malabo multi-billion dollar fraud, the pension scam, and finally why the President, whose body language does not abhor corruption, has redefined stealing as anything but corruption.”
Source: Punch