CPC leader, Gen. Mohammadu Buhari (rtd)
The Action Congress of Nigeria and the Congress for Progressive Change have said the ruling Peoples Democratic Party may cease to exist if their planned merger to tackle it in the 2015 general election succeeds.
The opposition parties said the PDP was scared of the planned merger, adding that the leadership style of the ruling party would lead it into oblivion.
The ACN and the CPC were reacting to a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Peoples Democratic Party, Olisa Metuh, who said self-interest and sectional agenda would not allow the planned merger to work.
Metuh, in the statement, had said, “They (electorate) will choose between an alliance, where personal interests will ceaselessly riot and yield no support to national stability, and the PDP which has remained the symbol of national unity and progress.
“At the appropriate time, they will decide whether to entrust their great nation to the hands of regionalists, doomsday prophets and pro-anarchists or to the safe hands of the PDP. Common sense will prefer the latter.”
However, the spokesperson for the ACN, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the statement showed that the PDP feared threats of the merger posed to it.
He said, “What is the interest of the PDP in whether the merger works or fails? It only shows it is fearful. I want to assure you that when the merger works, it will be a surprise to the ruling party.
“Our fear is that when it works, the PDP may not exist anymore because the party deteriorates every day.”
In his reaction, the spokesperson for the CPC, Mr. Rotimi Fashakin, said Metuh’s statement indicated the PDP’s was ready to thwart the merger plan.
He further said the party was guilty of imposing its programmes on the people, which would consequently lead to its rejection by the electorate.
He said, “What is evident in the statement is that the PDP is poised to enforce its anti-people policies on the people. The party plans to work subterranean and discretely, as one of its shenanigans, to scuttle the merger plan.
“The PDP is a party that operates like the mafia and if it were to be in the United State of America, many of its leaders would have been tried and jailed. What Metuh said showed that the party plans to scuttle the plan by us, the opposition, and we are ready for it.”