Date: 2015-09-20

The opposition Peoples Democratic Party on Saturday accused the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC administration of despotism and desperation to remove Senate President Bukola Saraki.

The PDP said the Buhari administration had continued to rule the country without a constitutional component of a cabinet, persistent abuse of power as well as undermining democratic institutions.

National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr. Olisa Metuh, who said this in a statement in Abuja, also accused the Buhari administration of intolerance, particularly over the treatment being meted out to Saraki.

According to the PDP, the administration has invaded a state Government House and personal houses and injected confusion into the judiciary.

The party expressed worry over what it called the “relentless onslaught against democratic institutions.” It said it was especially worried by “the growing tension trailing the quest to annex the National Assembly; for which the Presidency had since vowed not to recognise the current Senate leadership, in total disdain to the independence of the legislature and the principle of separation of powers.”

The PDP also described President Buhari’s condemnation of the recent coup in Burkina Faso as a mockery of reasoning.

Metuh said, “Ordinarily, the intra-party squabbles within the APC regarding leadership positions in the Senate is not necessarily our concern.

“Also, we are not interested in whether Senate President Bukola Saraki ran for the APC presidential ticket against President Muhammadu Buhari; or whether he ran for the Senate presidency against the advice of the President and his party.

“Our concerns here are the prevailing executive intolerance, the undermining of the institution of the National Assembly and the overall threat to the survival of our democracy.”

The party said it took note of the dangerous trend because the Presidency and the APC had not hidden their aversion to the election of Senators Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu as Senate President and Deputy Senate President, respectively.

The PDP spokesperson also said what was happening was part of a larger script to commence a major onslaught against federal lawmakers perceived to hold divergent views to those of the Presidency, irrespective of party affiliations, a situation that would ensure a subdued legislature.

The APC on its part accused the PDP of openly launching a counter-offensive against the determined efforts of the Buhari administration to rid the country of impunity and corruption, but warned that the opposition party will fail in its attempt to take Nigerians back to Egypt.

Its spokesman, Mr. Lai Mohammed, said, “With its statement that is nothing but an unabashed support for impunity and corruption, as well as its major actors, the PDP has now confirmed itself as the official ‘poster boy’ for corruption in Nigeria.”

APC said the long-winding sophistry about the rule of law, democracy and personal freedoms is aimed at couching the PDP’s abhorrence and disdain for the fight against corruption in democratic clichés, especially now that the battle is gradually hitting the PDP where it hurts.

The APC said,the persistent onslaught against the Buhari administration was neither altruistic nor informed by any belief in higher values, “because the allegations of corruption hanging on Metuh’s neck, from within his own party, is a clear indication that he is mortally afraid that the wind will soon blow hard enough to expose the fowl’s rump’’.

“Neither the PDP as a party nor its spokesman have the moral authority to condemn anyone, least of all a President that is working hard to rescue Nigeria from the abyss to which it has been plunged by the former ruling party.

“For the PDP to brush aside the latest revelation that a government it sired could not account for $700 million from the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), or the fact that the party could not account for billions of Naira in its own campaign funds, and then launch a frontal attack against a reformist government, is the height of shamelessness.

“For the ethically-challenged spokesman of the same morally-deficient party to continue to spew trash under the guise of opposition politics is totally provocative and absolutely unacceptable. Worse still, the lack of focus in the labyrinthine statements being issued by the opposition party has confirmed the prescience of the APC’s offer to the PDP’s spokesman to take a crash course in how to speak for the opposition.’’