The Peoples Democratic Party on Friday described Thursday’s claims by the All Progressives Congress that the PDP and the Presidency were not cooperating in the transition process as diversionary and unnecessary.
The party charged the APC to put its house in order instead of trying to shift blames about the confusion within its ranks.
This was contained in a statement signed by PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh. He said contrary to what the APC would want Nigerians to believe, the meetings of the transition and inauguration committees of both parties had been going on fruitfully.
Metuh said the PDP wondered where the false alarm that the President Jonathan’s transition committee had yet to meet that of the incoming President, Maj. Gen. Mohammadu Buhari, was coming from “if not a measure of the confusion in the APC camp.”
Metuh said, “While we understand Alhaji Lai Mohammed’s excitement in the euphoria of his party’s unexpected victory, we view the APC’s provocative statement, especially the unguarded invectives on the Presidency and PDP as an unfortunate display of arrogance and falsehood ostensibly aimed at heating up the system and creating room to cover for its inadequacies thereby inventing excuses for any failure in office.
“We can confirm that the APC Transition Committee led by Mallam Ahmed Joda has met at least twice with the Presidency team led by Vice-President Namadi Sambo while the Timipre Sylva-led APC inauguration committee has been meeting almost on a daily basis with the PDP team led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim.
“It is therefore most uncharitable for the APC to attempt to mislead the people by claiming that the PDP-led Presidency was not cooperating in the process.”
He explained that although the ruling party suffered some electoral setback, Nigerians were witness to the fact that the PDP had remained humble in defeat while focusing on rebuilding and reinventing itself. Such should not in any way warrant the unnecessary attacks, vituperations and insults from the APC.
Metuh noted that as the PDP looks up from the lowest level it had ever fallen, its members were fully determined to start the process of ascending back to an acceptable level in earnest.
The APC, he said, must therefore, learn to be decent and cease to be arrogant as that would amount to taking the goodwill of the people for granted.
The PDP spokesperson also said what should be of more concern to an in-coming government like APC was the negative signals and the rising worries by Nigerians over its flip-flops and apparent nervousness of its President-elect who had started reneging on his campaign promises.
He said, “Nigerians were bewildered when they heard General Buhari renege on his messianic posture and told them in clear terms not to expect him to rapidly fix the problems of the nation as he had promised during the campaign.
“The same President-elect who boldly stated in his campaign manifesto that ‘I, Muhammadu Buhari have resolved that the task ahead of me is that of securing our nation and prospering our people, not looking backward to the failed policies and promises’ had on May 5, 2015 in a meeting with APC governor-elects reneged and announced that he had “started nervously to explain to people that Rome was not built in a day.”
The PDP also chided the APC for denying a pledge made by the President-elect to deal with the Boko Haram insurgency within two months. It recalled that Buhari made the pledge in an interview he had with Christiane Amanpour on CNN on April 2, 2015.
The outgoing ruling party advised the incoming administration to be mindful of the fact that Nigerians had kept a list of campaign promises made by the APC and were preparing to hold them to account should they falter.
The PDP statement partly read: “Nigerians are not in a hurry to forget that the APC promised to rapidly fix the economy, generate, transmit and distribute electricity on a 24/7 basis, pay N5,000 monthly to 25 million poor Nigerians; provide allowances to the discharged but unemployed Youth Corps members for Twelve (12) months, create additional four million new homes, provide free education and meals for school children and bring naira to the same value with the dollar.”
In response, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, insisted that the President- elect’s transition committee had yet to meet with President Jonathan’s team. He told Saturday PUNCH in a telephone interview that it was unfortunate that the PDP was trying to stand logic on its head.
He said, “I am a member of the APC transition committee, we are 19 in number and we have yet to meet face to face with the PDP team.
“There are 19 members of the President- elect’s transition committee; we don’t know how many their members are but the truth is that we have never as a committee sat down with the President’s team for once.
“That our chairman has met the Vice-President with the company of the secretary and two of our members, does four equate with 19?
“As we are speaking, not one single page of handover note has been given to us. Does he (Metuh) know what cooperation is? As we speak, the President-elect’s transition committee has met for 10 days but we have never met with the outgoing President’s team.”
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