PDP Can’t Retake Power, APC Insists

• Ruling party frowns at those mocking ailing president

By Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has described the boast by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that it is ready to return to power in 2019 as both unattainable and unrealistic.

The ruling party also described what it said was the penchant by some PDP members to mock President Muhammadu Buhari over his ill-health as un-African and distasteful.

In a statement issued yesterday by the APC national spokesman Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the party said it had taken such misplaced optimism as part of the excitement after the Supreme Court victory secured by the Senator Ahmed Makarfi group in the PDP.

However, the APC spokesman said that since the last   Wednesday’s verdict, “we noticed that several of his supporters and party members have expressed similar sentiments”.

“It appears, however, that the outcome of Wednesday ruling is beginning to set them on a different course. We are therefore delighted that the PDP is beginning to talk about holding the APC accountable for the promises in our manifesto.

“We want Nigerians, not just the PDP, to hold us accountable for every promise contained in our manifesto. We only urge them to be fair. A manifesto is not a four-year programme.

“If PDP had fully implemented its manifesto in the 16 years that it was in power, Nigerians would not have been attracted to the APC promise of change in 2015, because there would have been little left to promise,” he said.

The APC spokesman said there are only a few good men left in the PDP while the rest are battling with one form of corruption baggage or the other.

According to him, under such a situation, no sensible person would take the PDP serious in their boast to win the 2019 presidential election, adding that the best the party could do is to rebrand its image and possible try and change its badly damaged name.

On the claim by PDP leaders that having “married two wives” that Nigerians were now in a position to see which one is better, Abdullahi said that the ruling party would not shy away from its promises.

“We find this metaphor quite interesting. We need to point out however that APC is the new wife that is busy working in the kitchen that has been looted empty by the former wife who had made away with the entire foodstuff and even the kitchen utensils. Nigerians know this.

“If the food is a little late in coming, they understand the circumstances. But if that other thieving wife now begins to argue that she was a better cook and should be brought back into the kitchen because the new wife is a slow cook, then that should pass for hypocrisy.

“No matter the temporary hardship that we may be experiencing, Nigerians know better than to bring PDP back to power so soon for fear that this time, they might disappear with the kitchen itself,” he said.

In the statement, APC also expressed regret at what it claimed was PDP’s penchant for mocking Buhari over his ill health. “We admit that the health of a president is every citizen’s business. However, it is un-African, if not ungodly, to continue to taunt a man and even challenge him to a fight at his moment of weakness.”