Nigerians deserve apologies from PDP, not campaign - APC

The All Progressives Congress has said what the Peoples Democratic Party owes Nigerians are apologies for its "16 years of misrul...

The All Progressives Congress has said what the Peoples Democratic Party owes Nigerians are apologies for its "16 years of misrule," and not campaign.

The ruling party said it was "an affront on the electorate" for PDP leaders to embark on campaign at zonal rallies "after leaving the country in a mess just three and half years ago."

The APC National Publicity Secretary, Lanre Issa-Onilu, said this during an interaction with journalists on Sunday in Abuja.

He said, "What we expect the PDP to do in this rally is to go to the zones and apologise profusely, demonstrate remorse, which they have failed to do. And they keep going to those zones for rally to insult people.

"When we go out for campaign, we will be doing two things because this campaign for APC is about two issues.


"We are going to bring character into focus. And for the candidates of the PDP, we won't go too far stressing the need to review who you are but the person you work with.

"We will also examine the personality of the presidential candidates, especially President Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of PDP, as well as the numerous achievements of the current administration in the last few years."

When asked why the APC had yet to raise the National Campaign Council, Onilu said, "Well, we don't have any problem at all and we are very okay because campaign, as you may know, is just one aspect of it.

"There are many other platforms to engage with the people. Rally, is just one."

According to Onilu, former President Olusegun Obasanjo is the best person to review the character of Atiku, which, he claimed, has been done in his (Obasanjo) book already.

"He (Obasanjo) told us he found him to be very unreliable person, somebody that is not trustworthy, that he found him to be somebody who compromises the system for personal gain.

"And we have evidence to that and we must bring that to focus. And we must continue to thank President Obasanjo for being so patriotic to have alerted the country to the dangers.

"The second leg of our campaign will be stewardship. We have been in government for three and a half years. We are going to give report of our stewardship.

"Every kilometer of road that we have done is a reminder to the systemic years of waste under the previous governments.

"Every rail track that we have laid is a reminder to the systemic wastefulness of PDP.

"The continuous increase in enrollment of pupils across the nation and the school feeding programme. It is a reminder to the 13.5 million pupils who were out of school under PDP.

"So, the campaign will be about stewardship and what we have used the three and a half years to do.

"All the abandoned projects that we have fixed. Check our Gross Domestic Product, it is no longer a mono product economy. It is now an economy that you have contribution from agriculture and solid minerals making solid impact on our GDP. That is diversification.

"A lot of Nigerians would travel this December for Christmas and the New Year. They would see the progress we have made on the roads that were nightmares for travellers under the PDP government and they would continue to see improvement."