The leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has threatened to pull out of the 2019 general elections if the electoral umpire and security agencies fail to demonstrate sufficient level of impartiality expected from them by Nigerians.
National Chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus stated this at the party’s national secretariat, yesterday while playing host to a combined delegation of the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI).
Secondus, who lamented what he called the manipulation of vote figures by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the recently concluded Ekiti governorship election in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC), also accused the Nigerian Police of chasing away PDP agents from various polling centres particularly areas known to be its strongholds.
“We are still contemplating on whether we will participate in the 2019 elections or not. We are yet to take a decision on this.
“We are not sure that the security agencies and INEC would be impartial and transparent. In the Ekiti elections, there were instances our party agents’ tags were removed and given to the APC agents.
“There were clear cases of manipulation, ballot snatching and harassment of our party agents,” Secondus said.
However, a frontline PDP presidential aspirant, Kabiru Tanimu Turaki, SAN, has said that the war against terror in the country has remained intractable because the current APC-led administration has failed to embrace global best practices of carrot and stick.
Speaking at a news conference in Minna, the Niger State capital, yesterday, Turaki, who was the chairman, Presidential Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North-East during the former President Goodluck Jonathan administration, explained that they were able to push Boko Haram insurgents to the fringes of the country and also conducted the 2015 elections in the frontline states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa by adopting the time-tested practices.
He said: “Unfortunately, the APC-led government failed to continue the battle from where the PDP left off, and worse still, the government abandoned the all-inclusive recommendations left behind for it. Hence, the reversal in fortunes in spite of the claim to have ‘technically’ degraded the Boko Haram.”
“There is nowhere in the history of nations that fought terror,” he said, “where terrorism was fought decisively and squarely based on open and direct or indirect confrontation between insurgents and the military.”
He noted that when terrorism is based on a dogma as in the case of Boko Haram, whether misguided or not, there was need he said, to take the dogma out of the minds of insurgents who have surrendered because when you win the battle, you have to win the war.
Furthermore, he said, you need to engage such insurgents in a serious re-orientation. You need also to ensure that they learn skills to become productive members of the society, in addition to making conscious efforts to re-integrate them into the society, he added.
Unfortunately, these are not options which this government is pursuing and that is why they are failing, he noted.
The presidential aspirant who recalled that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the U.S.. were allegedly attributed to institutional rivalry noted that the Nigerian case is even worse, as the security agencies are working at cross-purposes as earlier revealed by a senior official of government before a National Assembly Committee.
“How then can they take advantage of each agency’s comparative advantage in intelligence gathering, analyzing and implementing the information collated?” he asked.
Worse still, he said, there had been no leadership capable of taking decisive decisions to put an end to the rivalry, thereby putting the protection of lives and property in jeopardy.
“This certainly shall not be tolerated if Nigerians give me the mandate to lead,” he said.
Turaki also stressed that the Nigerian Project must not be allowed to fail.
Speaking at the formal presentation of his Letter of Intent to contest the PDP presidential primary to the party’s Board of Trustees in Abuja, Turaki said that if the Nigerian Project is allowed to fail, God forbids, its disastrous consequences on Africa would be better imagined than experienced.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria noted that the maladministration of the APC is threatening the fabrics of the National as indivisible and indissoluble entity under God.
He regretted that the APC government is misusing its understanding of the dynamics, complexities and intricacies of power to oppress Nigerians in its desperation to hold on to power at all costs.
Turaki said: “For the first time, everybody is dissatisfied with the Nigerian Project. Today, the economy is in doldrums. Nigerians have never been so divided. Today, we have a government that discriminates while Nigerians are not only hungry, but angry because of poverty, hunger and killings. Never in the history of this nation had there been this trenchant agitation for self-determination.”
He condemned the situation where security agencies were working at cross-purposes with the leadership lacking the capacity to call them to order.
“I have the capacity,” he said, “to provide a more reliable, safe and workable security architecture because security is key to attracting investment.”
The aspirant promised to strengthen the bond between the Executive and the Legislature, accord the Judiciary its due and respect the rule of law, in sharp contrast to the distasteful disposition of the APC to constitutional governance.
He decried the situation where for the first time, a government has failed to appoint either an Economic Adviser or have an Economic Team, and promised to appoint seasoned economic experts backed by robust policies to take the country out of the economic quagmire that the APC’s clueless administration had foisted on the people.
Turaki restated his belief in the principle of restructuring from the perspectives of devolution of power, true federalism, resource control, true fiscal federalism, statism and state police, noting that the report of the 2014 National Conference of which he was a member had the answers to these problems, but that the APC dumped it.
He said that the PDP has a historic mission to elect a well-educated, intelligent, young, dynamic and courageous candidate to defeat the APC’s candidate in 2019 to rekindle hope in Nigerians so that they can have confidence in themselves and the country, and also have trust in the leadership.
Chairman, PDP Board of Trustees, Alhaji Walid Jibrin, who described the aspirant as an able and reliable member, announced that a 12-member committee would be set up to interact with all presidential aspirants because the party wants to avoid mistakes by choosing a candidate acceptable to Nigerians.
Acting Secretary of the board and former Senate President, Adolphus Wabara, who noted that ‘Turaki seemed to be up to the task’ considering his awesome knowledge and solutions proffered to Nigeria’s problems, however, urged the party to avoid imposition and impunity in the selection of its candidates.