The All Progressives Congress (APC) has told National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Bamanga Tukur that only Nigerians can decide whether or not President Goodluck Jonathan will rule beyond 2015, saying his statement that the president will rule till 2019 is nothing but an empty boast aimed at ingratiating himself with the president.
In a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party also asked the PDP chairman to back up his statement calling on Nigerian youths to take over the reins of power, by first stepping down from his post to pave the way for the younger generation.
It reminded Tukur that one of his predecessors once boasted, in another euphoric moment, that the PDP would rule for 60 years, only for him to leave office in disgrace shortly thereafter.
“There is nothing on ground to justify Tukur’s empty boast beyond the PDP’s rigging machine, which is again being oiled in readiness for 2015, going by the bare-faced vote stealing and unbridled brigandage that the party exhibited in the recent bye-election in Delta Central Senatorial District,” the party said.
“The PDP, which has presided over the affairs of Nigeria for the past 14 years, has only succeeded in pushing more people into poverty, with 112 million people now living below the poverty line and millions of children out of school.
It observed that no sector has been spared the effects of the cluelessness and visionlessness of the PDP and its leaders, and wondered the empirical basis for which PDP seeks to continue ruling.
“It is interesting that the Chairman said the future belongs to the youths and that the era of gerontocracy is gone. The last time we checked, a 78-year-old man does not exactly belong to the generation of youths, even if he continues to hold away at the top echelon of the ruling party. The sincerity of that statement is therefore in doubt,” the statement continued.
“As for the PDP Chairman’s admonition to the youth to start preparing to take over the mantle of leadership, the question to ask is whether or not the undergraduates in the nation’s public universities, who have been marooned at home for over four months now because the PDP-led Federal Government repudiated the agreement it signed with ASUU, are not part of the leaders of tomorrow.
“If Tukur believes they are, he should urgently prevail on the government sired by his party to meet its obligation to ASUU and end the strike by the university teachers. Then we will know that he is serious about his postulation.
“Until then, we say talk is cheap, because all that we can see now is that the PDP-led Federal Government is doing everything in its power to mortgage the future of tomorrow’s leaders.”
