The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Iyorchia Ayu yesterday declared that Kaduna State, Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, was “too small” to stop the march of his political party to victory in 2023.
Ayu was reacting to El-Rufai’s boast that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) would not allow Nigeria’s major opposition party to return to power come 2023.
Ayu advised the governor to stop hallucinating, saying, “even a thousand El-Rufai’s cannot stop an idea whose time has come.”
The Kaduna State governor who spoke on Wednesday to State House correspondents after a meeting of APC’s 19 state governors with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, had said the ruling party had agreed on an “equitable and fair zoning formula” that would ensure that the opposition party “doesn’t come back to power” in 2023.
But reacting to El-Rufai’s comment, Ayu said: “When I read what El-Rufai said, I only felt pity for him. It’s even shocking that someone whom PDP built from obscurity to national prominence will describe the party as mere Peoples Destruction Party.”
In a statement issued by his Special Assistant on Communication and Strategy, Simon Imobo-Tswam, Ayu said only someone disconnected from reality and driven by hallucinations would boast of stopping PDP’s return to power, come 2023.
“But we are not surprised: that is how his party, the APC, is altogether disconnected from reality,” it added.
The statement read further: “For a start, we want to ask the governor: Who is the ‘We’ he is referring to here? How can people who cannot hold an ordinary convention stop the march of democratic forces? Is it his army of propagandists that he is referring to? Or is it the APC, a party that has failed Nigeria and Nigerians in every ramification?
“It is important to know because if it is propaganda, APC’s unmatched mediocrity, cocktail of excuses and trail of failed promises have shown everyone the limit of propaganda. And if by ‘we,’ he means the failed APC, we want to ask him: how? Or is it through the threat of his ‘body bags?’
“Except if the APC is planning to rig the 2023 polls, there is nothing that the APC can do to stop the resurgent PDP. The recent Area Council polls in the FCT have made that very clear: Nigerians want the PDP back. And we are returning to rescue and rebuild our country once again.
“El-Rufai’s APC came to power promising to end insecurity, stamp out corruption and grow the economy. These were its own selling points. Today, it has not only failed Nigerians, it has even failed itself. The APC has woefully failed to answer the questions it willingly set for itself.
The statement added: “Today, insecurity has not only grown into a multi-billion-naira industry, Nigeria now shares sovereignty with pampered terrorists. And as corruption grows in leaps and bounds, the economy continues to nose-dive. Nigeria is living on debts. We are today the real “beggar-and-debtor nation.”
Rather than continue its sophistry and demagoguery, the PDP national chairman enjoined El-Rufai and other anti-democratic elements in the ruling party, “to impress on the president to sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill before him instead of prevaricating.”
“The president should sign the bill. Appending his signature on that bill won’t take a minute. Why is it taking him so many weeks to sign? Is he still consulting?
“And will he consult forever? Is the prevarication, the protocols and the shift in dates all ploys to refuse signing it in the end so that the APC can extend its presidency via vote-fraud? Is this where Gov. el-Rufai’s boast is located?”
He advised El-Rufai and the APC to channel their energies into ensuring that the APC does not yet again shift its national convention rather than dissipating energies on stopping a moving train.