The Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress has described the
statement credited to Mr. Musliu Obanikoro the defeated PDP governorship
aspirant in Lagos that APC will run down Nigeria the way it ran down Lagos
as the height of pun that best typifies the confusion and incoherence that
have hit the PDP as they face imminent defeat in the February election.
The party said that the PDP is going down faster than even the members
could grapple and such imminent rustication is imbuing incredible
incoherence and confusion in its ranks and file as they grapple futilely
with the consequences of their exit from power.
In a release in Lagos, signed by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of
the APC, Joe Igbokwe, the party said that Mr. Obanikoro is like a rusty
and broken gramophone that oozes nonsense after his humiliation at the PDP
primary by a stooge of Bode George and Adeseye Ogunlewe. It advises
Obanikoro to take time to rehabilitate his battered political image before
uttering incoherent jabs to warm himself back to the fading PDP government
and its patronage.
“It is apparent that Obanikoro is still seeing double from the dazing he
got when his wonky dream of ruling Lagos was finally nailed by a puppet
thrown up by the duo of Bode George and Adeseye Ogunlewe. It is apparent
that Obanikoro is gasping for words to throw to gratify himself once again
to his outgoing Abuja patrons so he will do the last minute harvesting
before the impending burst. So what better way to show this by appearing
blandly paradoxical? From every seeming indication, Obanikoro was jesting
or trying to poke fun on the fading PDP that has so disappointed him by
that statement which shows that he does not believe, as most Lagosians,
that Lagos will ever be infected with the curse PDP has become for
Nigerians for the past sixteen years.
“Yes, APC will run down Nigeria to a country where infrastructures work,
where jobs are created, where there is security, where schools and
hospitals work, where roads are fixed, where free housing is being
provided Nigerians, where the economy is robust, like in present day
Lagos. This is the type of run down Nigeria requires today far from the
PDP ‘glorious’ picture of massive looting, ethnic and sectarian division
and acrimony, worsening unemployment, infrastructural wreckage, total
unemployment, overwhelming inflation, total devaluation of Naira to
worthless tissue paper, where life expectancy has been brought down to 38
years, where poverty walks on all fours, where there is no light, where
the citizens live in total insecurity, where some parts of Nigeria has
been ceded to insurgents. These remain Obanikoro and PDP’s grand
achievements for Nigeria which he is jealously guarding but which
Nigerians want to do away by the massive rejection his PDP is facing all
over Nigeria.
“But beyond Obanikoro;s queerness, we see someone who is running his last
lap in opportunistic politics and who is scared that his fountain of
unearned political perks is about to be upturned. We see a character who
as Chairman of Lagos Island Local Government burnt down the council
secretariat to cover his well known perfidy. We see a character who was
made a Commissioner in Lagos by the Asiwaju Tinubu regime but ended up
misappropriating the money meant for Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. We see a
person who was made a Senator but ended up as a Judas in Abuja and since
then, despite the patronages he has gotten from his masters, has never set
his consuming political dream on sail in Lagos again. We want to point out
that Obanikoro who has become a serial political failure is running away
from his shadows and with the sure exit of his principals from the seat of
power, and the assured coming in of the APC government this May, Obanikoro
knows it is all over politically for him.
“Lagos APC however wants to assure Obanikoro that Lagos does not want the
curse of the ‘run up’ he and his looting PDP members have brought to the
country. Nigerians are indeed asking out of the brand PDP ‘run up’ of
Nigeria and they want a quick end to this harrowing development. Nigerians
are saying with one unifying voice that we will do better without the
curse of ‘run ups’ the Obanikoros and his fellow PDP members have brought
to Nigeria in the past sixteen years such that the country has become the
third poorest nation on earth even while it is the sixth largest producer
of oil.
“Again, Lagos APC wants to let Obanikoro know, in case, in his desire for
rehabilitation he pretends not to know, that it is such huge success
stories as Lagos, under the APC that is driving the present social
movement for change from unending PDP pestilence. We want to let Obanikoro
know that the suffocating negative achievements of the PDP are factors
fueling the mass acceptance the APC is enjoying and the mass desertion
that is hitting his PDP and which has set him on the kind of confusion to
utter confusing statements with hope such will arrest the drift of PDP
among determined Nigerians.”