Kayode Shopekan
THE People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has asked the All Progressives Congress (APC) to desist from using anti-graft agencies to hound opposition.
The PDP has claimed that the APC-led administration had been using security agencies, particularly the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to hound and harass PDP leaders in a renewed move to cow and weaken opposition formation ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelRaising alarm over alleged plot to force a one-party state on the country, the PDP said that no amount of intimidation, harassment, and use of anti-graft agencies to clampdown on its leaders over corruption charges, could make the party surrender or abdicate the mandate already given to it by Nigerians to lead in the effort to rescue the nation, come 2023.
According to PDP spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, the APC knows that it has been rejected by Nigerians and can not win elections under any condition.
He said, “The APC-led government seeks to use the state apparatus of power to decimate and muzzle opposition and dissenting voices and foist an anti-democratic situation on Nigerians.
“Part of this heinous plot by the APC is to use the EFCC to bully, harass and hound PDP leaders, who are rallying Nigerians for the task ahead, with a view to coercing them to abdicate the mandate of the people and join the APC.
“This explains why the EFCC and other security agencies have been harassing PDP leaders such as former Senate President, Bukola Saraki, former PDP state governors, including the former governor of Abia State, Senator Theodore Orji, former governor of Bayelsa State, Seriake Dickson, his Kano State counterpart, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso and other key PDP leaders, on trump up charges, while their counterparts in the APC with similar allegations as well as others who had defected to the APC are moving around freely.”
The PDP alleged that corrupt officials of the APC administration were freely looting the national treasury under President Muhammadu Buhari’s watch.
The party said that it had been made aware of plots by the APC administration to use the EFCC to further harass outspoken PDP chieftains in a bid to muzzle the party, force a one-party state and deny Nigerians a voice to challenge the atrocities of the APC and its administration.
Ologbondiyan, “If the APC had done well; if it had not devastated Nigerians and brought so much pain to the people; if the APC had managed our national resources well instead of engaging in unbridled treasury looting, stealing over N15trn naira and turning our nation into the poverty capital of the world; if APC had not compromised our national security and threw our nation open to bandits, insurgents and terrorists, would it not be celebrating by now instead of this plot to force the people to submission?
“We alert Nigerians of how many of our leaders are being harassed by emissaries of the APC in a bid to get them to compromise their stand against the corrupt and inept APC administration.”
