APC, PDP: The two major parties

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has accursed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of over heating the polity with falsehood and its utterances at its electioneering campaigns ahead of the general elections.

Malam Lanre Issa-Onilu, the APC National Publicity Secretary, made the accusation in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja.

“As the 2019 general election fast approaches, the APC has watched with consternation how the PDP in the last couple of weeks has elevated falsehood and crying wolf into an ignoble art.

“Nigerians have also watched in disbelief how the PDP without proof has consistently and vehemently pilloried state institutions performing various roles in the coming general elections.

“From security agencies to our election management body, the PDP has spared none in its barefaced lies,”the APC spokesman said.

He added that on a daily basis, the PDP had invented one lie after the other to discredit state institutions in the eyes of Nigerians and the international community.

He maintained that PDP’s ignoble actions were unhealthy for our electoral processes and a threat to our maturing democracy.

Issa-Onilu added that the PDP’s game plan was to discredit the entire process before, during, and after the elections in order to make the final outcome a “nullity”.

He,however, said the PDP must understand that all registered political parties were equal stakeholders in the coming elections.

He stressed that the the PDP’s tired narrative that the entire election process was skewed against it should therefore be seen for what it was: an admittance of its defeat.

Issa-Onilu said the era of sham elections were behind us, adding that the records of credible elections conducted since the APC took over the country’s governance in 2015 were public knowledge.

This, he said, could be compared to selections, impositions and fraudulent elections which was the order of the day under the PDP.

He added that the APC would, however, continue in its progressive tradition by ensuring that elections were free, peaceful credible and that every vote counted while the wishes of the electorate prevailed in all elections.

Issa-Onilu urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and other state institutions responsible for different election duties to remain firm and focused in the discharge of their legitimate roles.

He advised that the institutions must not be stampeded into taking actions that ran contrary to the Constitution and the Electoral Act.

“Our free advice to the PDP is that it concentrates its energy to resuscitate its floundering campaign which has seen majority of its governors tacitly and openly avoid supporting the presidential bid of its candidate, Atiku Abubakar,”he said.

He noted that Atiku’s recent visit to the United States was made possibly by heavily paid lobbyists who aided the temporary suspension of his travel ban.

The APC spokesman recalled that Atiku’s travel ban was linked to decade-old bribery scandals and corruption indictments.

He, therefore, urged Atiku to come clean to Nigerians on his problems,saying that:” this is the least he owes an electorate he wishes to lead”.