The All Progressives Congress (APC) has responded to the claim by former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, who described both the ruling party and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as embroiled in cesspit of corruption.
Professor Jega, who spoke in Kaduna, asked Nigerians to seek for an alternative platform to the two main political parties in the forthcoming general elections.
But the APC, in its response last night, urged the former INEC chair not to lump it with the main opposition party.
National Secretary, Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC)
of the APC,, Senator John James Akpanudoedehe, in a statement, said the judgment of Professor Jega lacks scholarly research and was not evidenced based.
The APC said Professor Jega got it wrong to have said the ruling party had failed to meet expectations of Nigerians.
The statement read in part: “While the PDP failed to meet the expectations of Nigerians as a government and opposition party, the APC is thriving, healthy and assiduously cleaning the massive mess left behind by the PDP which failed to deliver democratic dividends to the people of Nigeria after being in charge of the country for 16 years.
“While Professor Jega is right about the PDP, a party under which he served as the chairman of the nation’s election management body, we reject his comparison of the APC with the PDP.
“Professor Jega got his facts wrong and mixed up in his baseless comparison of the PDP with the APC.
“While we do not intend to join issues with Professor Jega, we encourage him to engage in genuine scholarly research and come up with evidence-based conclusions on the Progressive orientation of the APC.
“It is however instructive to note that having recently abandoned his academic pursuit and blindly plunged into the arena of PDP’s brand of politics, the erstwhile electoral umpire as a politician can make such political statements occasionally while trying to launch his political career in a mushroom political party.
“The APC is a strong, united, popular and focused political unit. Hence, the professor should note the political lesson that maligning the APC would not provide him a springboard to achieve his desires. Nigerians are wiser and remain the ultimate judges.”
PDP, on its part, said it was wrong for anyone to compare its performance with that of APC.
The party in a statement by its National Publicity, Kola Ologbondiyan, said whereas the opposition party, during its 16 years tenure paid off the country’s debt and revamped the economy with massive jobs created for citizens, the APC has wrecked the economy.
“The PDP asserts that trying to compare the incompetent and decadent APC to the highly productive and development-oriented PDP is an unpardonable disservice to our nation and calls to question the sense of judgment of Professor Jega. Perhaps the professor needs to be reminded of how the PDP worked hard to revamp our nation’s economy, paid off our huge foreign debts and went ahead to grow the economy to become the largest investment hub in Africa as well as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, with Fitch B+ rating; only for the APC to wreck the economy and turned our nation into the world poverty capital and a debtor country in a space of six years,” Ologbondiyan said.
•Pieced together from reports by Nigerian Tribune and Daily Sun.
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