Press Statement
11th January 2009
PDP ZAMFARA PROCLAIMATION: CALL FOR SELF-HELP
‘The only job we know is to destroy opposition and we are here to do everything possible to dismantle the opposition. We owe no apologies to offer to anybody for being a big and strong party with strategies to muzzle any opposition’
--------His Excellency Sule Lamido, Governor Jigawa State.
‘ Nigeria’s political opposition needs to learn from Ghana in accepting defeat and not going to court, spending years fighting electoral victory’
Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, Chairman PDP.
Conference of Nigeria Political Parties {CNPP} was outraged when CNPP Zamfara Chapter in our weekly review meeting , reported Peoples Democratic Party {PDP}’s offensive proclaimation , on the occasion of the defection of Governor of Zamfara State Mamuda Shinkafi to PDP; that their only job is to destroy the opposition; thus confirming our position that PDP is the tragedy of our democracy.
Whereas, CNPP notes Governor Sule Lamido’s speech on behalf of PDP Governors, especially when he innocently reaffirmed the PDP raison de’tre for corrupting our democracy, for consolidating One Party State, for instituting Do-or-Die political culture and for squandering over $16 billion without electricity: however we wish to sound a note of warning that PDP has no monopoly of violence and that democracy cannot survive under muzzle, destruction or group paranoia strategy.
We are all witnesses to how PDP since 1999 deployed enormous energy and national resources to dismantle, muzzle and destroy the All Nigeria Peoples Party {ANPP}, Alliance for Democracy {AD}, All Progressive Grand Alliance {APGA} et al, corrupted the Electoral Commission, manipulated the judiciary and subverted other democratic institutions and by so doing captured 27 Governors out of 36, over 700 State House of Assembly seats out of 880, over 300 Federal House seats out of 360 and over 80 Senators out of 109.
The germane questions are who benefits from PDP brigandage? Where are Nigerians in all these battles of destruction of the opposition? Did PDP with this Pyrrhic victory stop the severe economic decline or halt our dangerous slide to a failed state?
It is our considered view that Nigerians are the losers to this ignoble battle to destroy the opposition, corrupt our democracy, loot our commonwealth and indeed create the material conditions that make peaceful change impossible.
We were appalled that the first state visit of President Umaru Musa Yaradua since assumption of office was the arena for the destruction of the opposition; an unholy alliance that is at variance with the rule of law mantra of his regime and the spirit and letters of the 1999 Constitution, which he swore to uphold, protect and defend.
CNPP rates PDP’s One Party arrogant misrule, corruption and insistence to destroy the opposition as a wake-up call to Nigerians for self-help; as One Party State despotism cannot pretend to be democratic.
Consequently, we challenge the PDP to abandon this inglorious path of destruction and their incurable Election-Phobia, failing which the Jos North carnage will be child’s play in the next election; as the opposition will hearken to Chief Vincent Ogbulafor’s advice to abandon the court and resorts to self-help, hence make the country ungovernable.
Osita Okechukwu
National Publicity Secretary
CNPP
08039738870