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PDP rejects Minister Lai’s offer

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PDP rejects Minister Lai’s offer

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has told the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, to keep his offer to tutor them on how to play the opposition.

PDP said Mohammed should keep the teaching to himself as such will be an advanced syllabus on lies.

PDP stated that he should keep “His so-called crash course on opposition politics as such will be full of advanced syllabus on lies, falsehood, deception, and propaganda, which are patent trademarks of the APC (All Progressives Congress) and its controlled Federal Government,” PDP said.

The party was reacting to the minister’s response on its statement on the return of the Dapchi girls, where it accused the Federal Government of stage managing the abduction and return of the girls for electoral purposes.

Mohammed who was not happy with the reaction of the PDP accused the party as failing “woefully” both as a ruling party for 16 years and now as an opposition party, adding that the PDP should either congratulate the APC government for the release of the girls or keep quiet.

But in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, on Thursday, the PDP said it will always reply APC’s government lies with facts and continue to be firm on the side of the people as always.

It said that the Federal Government should rather hide its face in shame, having been “busted in its numerous lies in governance, the latest being its complicity in the abduction and return of the Dapchi schoolgirls.

The statement read, “We hope Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the APC as well as the Federal Government are following the reactions and comments of Nigerians on this latest ruse and noting how their party and government are being mocked.

“Your APC and government have become frustrated because you can no longer hoodwink Nigerians as you did in the past. The PDP will therefore overlook your intemperate reactions as signs of these times.

“However, Alhaji Lai Mohammed need not be in a hurry to defend his dishonest and dysfunctional government as he would soon have more than enough to chew.

“This administration will at the appropriate time provide answer to allegations that while the nation sorrow, agents of the APC are busy in financial rackets and criminal round tripping of ransoms, in foreign currencies, to service APC interests.

“The minister should be ready to explain, at the appropriate time, those behind the transactions, who got what and under what agreements, as well as the truth behind allegations of clandestine deals with insurgents.”

In another statement, the PDP told the Federal Government to fight corruption and stop hounding members of the opposition parties.

READ ALSO: DAPCHI GIRLS RELEASE: Congratulate us or keep quiet, Minister Lai tells PDP

The party frowned at the Motion Exparte filed by the Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the recovery of public property seeking the forfeiture of assets allegedly not declared by the Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, alleging plots to silence the opposition.

It said: “The PDP recalls that this government rushed to arraign Senator Ekweremadu and the Senate president, Dr. Bukola Saraki in 2016 on trumped up charges of forgery of Senate Standing Rule, even when there was not even a mention of their names in the contentious police report or Proof of Evidence. It eventually withdrew the charges for lack of merit.

“The police raided and ransacked Senator Ekweremadu’s official guest house in Abuja in May 2017 and blamed it on false whistleblowers, whom they charged to court. Nothing has been heard about the trial of the alleged false whistleblowers again.

“In the current matter, apart from relying on an obsolete law to dabble into the roles of the Code of Conduct Bureau, we are not surprised that the Panel could not carry out a thorough and independent investigation on the purported property of the senator, but relied on a petition by the former Chief Judge of Enugu State, Justice Innocent Umezulike, who is standing corruption trial in several courts, after his removal from office by the National Judicial Council (NJC) in 2017.

“We recall that the senator accused Umezulike and some politicians of stealing and doctoring his will, inserting non-existent properties or properties that had nothing to do with him.

“It is also instructive that this calculated smear campaign is in the guise of forfeiture of phantom assets came on the heels of Senator Ekweremadu’s alarm and scathing criticism of the APC-led administration over the nation’s deteriorating democracy and in the midst of the ongoing executive-legislature faceoff, in which a ranking senator of the APC extraction identified Ekweremadu as a pillar of support to the Senate President”.

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The PDP said that contrary to the Federal Government’s claims, Senator Ekweremadu had assured it that he declared his assets.

The party has also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately call his party, All Progressives Congress (APC) and some of his appointees to order over their manifest interest and continued interference in the trial of its former National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh.

It also urged the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) to protect the institution of the judiciary and the courts from the established direct interferences of the APC and officials of the Federal Government in the conduct of cases involving its members and particularly, the former National Publicity Secretary.

 

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