By Bayo Onanuga
The unravelling of the depraved Peoples Democratic Party reached extreme absurdity yesterday when its National Chairman, Dr Iyorchia Ayu while campaigning in Kano, declared that the party brought shame to Nigeria. Ayu’s verdict on his own party should not be seen as a mere slip of tongue.
It was truly an articulation of the inner mind of the former academic and senate president, a self-admission of the egregious failing of the party when it was in charge of our country for 16 years.
Ayu’s viral statement that “PDP has brought us shame and we will not retain them in power”, concurs with the general verdict that the party failed the country and its people and should never be given a chance to return to power.
One of the recent reminders of the failure of the umbrella party was the Ajaokuta Steel Complex. The party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar as head of the Obasanjo era privatisation programme, granted Global Steel a concession in 2004 to take over the company.
Another PDP government cancelled the concession when it found out that it was a mess. Global Steel took Nigerian government to court and demanded $7 billion compensation, even though it failed to fulfil the terms of the concession by making Ajaokuta a reality.
The case lingered for 12 years until the APC administration of President Muhammadu Buhari stepped in. Global Steel agreed to end its legal battle and walk away with $496 million of Nigeria’s money.
As the Minister of Information revealed recently, the Buhari government, which has been clearing many messes left by the successive PDP administration, made a bulk payment of $250 million and agreed to pay the balance in five instalments. Till date, Buhari has paid a total of $446 million out of the $496 million. The Buhari government will make the last payment of $50 million next month and Ajaokuta will revert fully to the country and allow the implementation of government’s plan, including Russian intervention, to make the company operational.
Without showing any remorse and shame, Atiku Abubakar recently went to Kogi state, the home of the unfortunate Steel company to make another empty promise of reviving the company.
Atiku probably wanted to cash in on the short memory of our people as his party has been going about with the conman campaign of recovering Nigeria, when it created, in the first place, the monumental damage that APC government has been struggling to fix for almost eight years.
While in charge of Nigeria, the PDP also left our national infrastructure, roads, rail, airports derelict. Notably, Atiku and his boss, Obasanjo failed to deliver on vital road networks, including roads to their towns. The APC government of President Buhari has now done the road to Atiku’s town in Jada, Adamawa State.
Worst of all and most callously, the PDP shared the $2.1 billion meant to procure arms to fight Boko Haram insurgency, making our soldiers vulnerable to the superior weaponry of the enemies of the state and allowing insecurity to fester.
In its degenerated state, the PDP in the last few days has been making outlandish claims and raising false alarms to just grab the headlines because the party and its perennial presidential candidate have nothing tangible to tell Nigerians because of their sordid past. If PDP campaign spokesmen are not making false claims of Billions being stashed away by our presidential candidate, their sleepwalking Director-General, Aminu Tambuwal who has no record of any achievement in Sokoto State, where he has been Governor for almost eight years, will construct imaginary plan by APC to hack INEC server and BVAS.
Nigerians, we believe, know the true hackers. Atiku’s PDP did so in 2019 and may well be planning to do so this month. PDP has become a danger to itself and a big threat to our country that must be finally exterminated from our body politic by Nigerians through their votes against the party that set our country back.
In our view, Iyorchia Ayu did not suffer slip of the tongue. He was only reflecting an inner guilt about the grave damage his party inflicted on our country for 16 years.
In the coming elections, Nigerians should never make the error of allowing this discredited party smell the scent of power. Iyorchia’s PDP has not learnt any lesson and has not changed its behaviour. The Nigerian voters should simply consign it to the dustbin of history, while keeping faith with the APC, which offers Renewed Hope.
▪︎ Onanuga is the Director, Media & Publicity, APC Presidential Campaign Council