Produce Daura’s membership card or keep quiet, APC tells PDP

• PDP releases evidence

The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday insisted that the Director-General of the Department of State Service (DSS), Mr. Lawal Daura, was not a card-carrying member of the party. It said nothing short of producing Daura’s membership card or evidence of his membership registration would convince discerning Nigerians that he was indeed a member of the APC as alleged by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The APC in a statement issued in Lagos by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said: “While it amounts to rabblerousing and crass politicking for the PDP to have wrongly accused Daura of being a member of the APC without a scintilla of credible evidence, the PDP has weakened its argument by using the pictures in which Daura appeared with the President and the fact that he served in an election committee as evidence of his membership of the APC.

“Possession of an APC membership card by Mr. Daura or evidence of registration as a party member at his ward, local government or state will be the only conclusive evidence of his membership of the party.” The party noted that: “Until such an evidence is produced, we are sorry we have to tell the PDP to shut up!” The party said the PDP was jittery because it was aware of the kind of impunity perpetrated under the Federal Government it sired from 1999 to 2015. According to APC, “PDP has forgotten the saying that he who must come to equity must come with clean hands.

When Mr. Mike Okiro chaired the security committee of the PDP campaign in 2011, did that prevent him from being appointed the Chair of the Police Service Commission, which is responsible for issues concerning the welfare, promotion and discipline of all police personnel, in 2013? “When the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mr. Mike Omeri, was appointed into the Jonathan election committee in 2015, did he resign his appointment as head of the agency or did he automatically become a card-carrying member of the PDP? “Did retired Col. Kayode Are not become the DG of the DSS despite being a close confidante of Gen. (Olusegun) Obasanjo during his electioneering to become President? Was this not under a PDP Federal Government? “In any case, even in the world’s most advanced democracy, United States, was a card-carrying Democrat, Mr. Leon Panetta, not named as head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by President Barack Obama in 2009? Here in Nigeria, the APC-led FG has not even gone that far, and the PDP is blabbing.”

But in a swift reaction, the PDP in a post by online portal, titled: “The Limit of Lies and Deceit…’Lai Mohammed When Will The Lies End?” said it had published three documents: two photographs and a register of APC Presidential Campaign Security Directorate with Daura on number eight on the list. One of the images released showed members of the security directorate in a group photograph with its then President Muhammadu Buhari during a campaign The DSS DG is also shown in the group photograph with Buhari and others.