By Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, National Publicity Secretary, APC
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in its latest ignominious campaign of falsehood is attempting to distort facts on the security record of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration.
The PDP National Chairman Uche Secondus in a recent television interview declared that under the APC administration, more Nigerians have been killed than during the Civil War that ended in 1970. Sadly, this kind of blatant falsehood has become the favourite pastime of the PDP.
If we are to join the PDP in their mindless game of playing politics with the state of insecurity, we would be pitching the number of casualty during the civil war with what Nigerians witnessed under PDP. As a Party, we would rather engage the PDP on the number of completed projects and pro-people policies we have embarked on as a government for the benefit of the country.
The APC understands governance to be serious business and is focused on finding lasting solution to the state of insecurity. Notably, significant successes have been recorded in the last three and half years.
For instance, the Niger Delta violence that was prevalent under the PDP government has not only been tackled, the APC government has now embarked on the environmental cleanup of Ogoniland to restore the ecosystem of the area, which was of no concern to PDP during its 16 years of ignoble rule.
Besides guerrilla attacks and hitting at soft targets, Boko Haram has been seriously degraded such that it lacks any capacity to hold territory. Most Nigerians, especially, the people of the North East are still smarting from the monstrosity of Boko Haram attacks on the innocent citizens and control of large swathes of the country’s territory under PDP.
However, in view of the PDP’s distortion of facts, it is necessary to catalogue some of the many unresolved political assassinations, state sponsored military attacks against Nigerian citizens and unchecked ethno-religious conflicts that led to the gruesome deaths of hapless Nigerians in their thousands.
We sadly recall military attacks on communities such as Odi and Zaki Biam; resultants deaths from riots over Sharia law in different parts of the North; unchecked internecine killings in Plateau State and other states in the North Central claimed thousands of lives. The Niger Delta militancy that emerged under PDP made the region a hotbed of expatriate kidnappings, killings, illegal bunkering and other criminal activities. With the emergence of Boko Haram under the PDP administration, the sect was allowed to gain ground and control 14 local governments, turning states like Borno, Adamawa, Yobe and the Federal Capital Territory into killing fields.
The least PDP can do in this circumstances is to resist the urge to dance on the graves of the hundreds of thousands of people who were gruesomely murdered while it was in charge. PDP and indeed, all of us owe victims solemn conducts in their honour and in empathy with the bereaved families.