The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has advised the governing All Progressives Congress, APC, to build on the successes recorded by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, while it held power for 16 years or risk being pushed aside in 2019.
Mr. Ekweremadu gave the advise on Thursday at the 67th meeting of he National Executive Committee meeting of the PDP, which held at the party’s national headquarters in Abuja.
He stated that the PDP, in its 16 years of being in power, “changed the face of telecommunication in Nigeria”, making it the best in Africa.
The senator also said it was the PDP that laid the foundation for genuine anti corruption fight in the country by setting up relevant agencies and pushing for deliberate policies and legislation to achieve the goals.
He added that a PDP government relentlessly pursued and got debt forgiveness for Nigeria and that the party actually “changed the face of democracy in the country”.
The lawmaker also said the PDP greatly enhanced the fortune of the nation’s democracy when the immediate past president Goodluck Jonathan “ willingly accepted defeat after a controversial election”.
“APC should learn on our success or we would be back in power by 2019,” he said.
Mr. Ekweremadu said the PDP has a chance to come back to power because the governing APC was already faltering.
“ This is the first time in Nigeria that all sections of the country are crying of marginalization,” he said.
Speaking earlier, the acting National Chairman of the PDP, Uche Secondus, said the party is poised to play the role of an opposition party by actively engaging the ruling APC.
“Today the PDP as an opposition Party has become the driving force in the National Assembly and our own Senator Ike Ekweremadu is the Deputy Senate President, a feat unprecedented in the political history of Nigeria,” he said.
The acting chairman also said the robust approach to opposition by the PDP has led to the challenge of the APC’s ‘inordinate’ ambition when it tried to take the PDP’s mandate in Ekiti state through an impeachment process.
While commending the party’s communication strategy, Mr. Secondus said the PDP has been able to highlight certain abuses of the electoral act by security agencies orchestrated against PDP candidates with tribunal cases.
“We use this opportunity to reiterate our call on the security agencies to desist from these abuses in the interest of the sustenance of our democratic system,” he said.
Buhari’s anti corruption fight targeting PDP members
The acting chairman of the PDP also said while the ongoing fight against corruption by President Muhammadu Buhari is ‘ordinarily’ commendable, he accused the president of going after PDP members only.
“It would be morally repugnant to target PDP members while seemingly protecting APC members. All we are calling for is an equal and fair treatment of all Nigerians under the law.
“Government should prevent the slide of our dear country into a police state by controlling some of the brazen acts of the security agencies against state institutions as exemplified in the invasion of the Akwa Ibom Government House by some officers of the DSS,” he said.
Mr. Secondus also called on the federal government to “come out straight with Nigerians on the state of our economy, which is gradually sliding into recession.
“It appears that the lack of an economic direction and remedial actions from the government is having a debilitating effect on the economy – jobs are being lost and small businesses are closing shop as a result of the lack of constructive economic engagement from the APC government,” he said.
Some of those who attended Thursday’s meeting include the governors of Delta, Ondo, Kogi, Enugu, Rivers and Taraba, while Gombe state governor was represented by his deputy.
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