Your Plans to Retake Power in 2019 Won’t Materialise, APC Tells PDP

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has asked the main opposition party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) to stop hallucinating over the possibility of staging a come-back to power in 2019. The position of the ruling party came just as it awaits the return of President Muhammadu Buhari from his leave abroad so that its plan to hold its National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting and subsequently the national convention can take proper shape.

The party said it is unfortunate for the PDP leaders to be harbouring the intention of returning to office even when Nigerians were yet to forgive them for their terrible misdeeds of the past. In an apparent response to PDP’s statement on Friday indicating that it has begun re-alignment with political allies with a view to retaking power in the next election, the APC said the issues that made Nigerians reject the PDP in the last general elections are still fresh in their minds.

The party noted that most of the daunting challenges that Nigeria is currently facing have their roots from the 16 years of PDP maladministration, adding that it would amount to mere day-dreaming if the discredited party thinks that people have forgotten what happened in the recent past.

The National Publicity Secretary of APC, Mallam Bolaji Abdulahi, who spoke to THISDAY yesterday on telephone said while the move to revamp the PDP is welcomed by the ruling party, such goodwill must not be misconstrued to mean that PDP can become a solution to the problem it caused.

The APC Spokesman said “those leaders of the PDP nursing the ambition to retake power must be thinking that Nigerians have short memory of their past misrule that brought the country great pain that we are currently passing through.

“It is not as if the APC is going to be sleep and allow the PDP to retake power, but the fact is that no matter how we scream it whatever that is happening now in the country that is wrong has its roots from the days PDP administrations held sway, that is the past 16 years they held power. “There is no way an objective assessment of the present challenges facing the country will exempt the PDP, whether in terms of unemployment, inflation or foreign exchange problem; all these did not start happening less than two years ago. So the truth is that it is under the misrule that Nigerians witnessed in the last decade and half under the PDP that made Nigerians to reject that party and to vote for change.

“We are not denying that there are some challenges now but the PDP should stop posturing about coming back to power and stating that Nigerians have short memory in remembering where we are coming from. “However, we wish them good luck in their restructuring and in the interest of democracy, wish that they recover. “Every Nigerian will like to see PDP recover as a collective and to become a strong opposition party. We must not misconstrue that desire to see the PDP come back with the notion that it will now be the solution that to the country’s problem,” he said.