Bolaji Abdullahi

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) says the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Nigeria’s main opposition party survives on the oxygen of corruption.

In a statement issued by its spokesman, Bolaji Abdullahi, the APC said it was alerting Nigerians to the many wild and unsubstantiated allegations levelled against it, the government and some of its institutions such as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by the PDP.

The statement read in part: “Strangely, the PDP has faulted the EFCC’s offer of assistance to INEC to monitor campaign funds. What is the PDP afraid of? It is clear that the party is still living in the past when public funds were criminally diverted to sponsor its political activities.

“It is obvious that PDP is still terrified by transparency, preferring instead that Nigeria continues to wallow in the culture of corruption and impunity that it has entrenched in the country because that is the only way the party knows how to operate.

“Corruption is their oxygen. APC welcomes any measures taken to ensure transparency in electoral financing.”

The statement further read that in the name of playing opposition, the PDP had chosen to launch itself back into reckoning by engaging in destructive propaganda, deliberately spreading false, misleading and fabricated tales with the sole aim of causing resentment, distrust and panic in the country.

While recognizing the right of the PDP and other political parties to criticize the APC, the statement said such criticisms about the party’s programmes and policies should be done based on facts and reason instead of engaging in wild propaganda.

Abdullahi further said PDP’s preemptive and presumptive attacks on INEC were because the Commission had vowed not to return to the primitive and undemocratic way of ballot snatching which was perfected and regularly perpetuated by the PDP when it was in power.