While the electorates, whom the government owes the responsibility to protect are on the receiving end of the unrestrained terrorism attack, the government appears to have ran out of options or have jettisoned its duties, choosing rather to engage in blame game and outright deceits.
Huhuonline.com understands that the All Progressives Congress (APC) does not seem to be taking the accusation from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of being linked with terrorist acts in the country lightly.
The party on Friday accused President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP of politicising Nigeria’s security situation by engaging in outright deception to exclude APC Governors from the meeting the President himself had called for Thursday to discuss the security situation in the country.
In a statement titled: ‘Actions Speak Louder Than Words!’, the PDP had on Thursday evening said: “when we said that the All Progressive Congress, APC, as it is presently constituted, aids and abets terror in Nigeria by omission and commission, some Nigerians doubted us.
“But what further proof can there be of the culpability of the APC than the decision of its governors to shun the National Security Council meeting called by the President to deliberate on ways to bring the sponsors of terror and their foot men to book?
“Government is different from politics and it is quite unfortunate that in the pursuance of politics APC Govs shunned a meeting to secure the nations integrity and protect the lives of Nigerians.
“It is important to note that APC governors do not shun meetings where the Federal Government takes care of their financial interests. But as this meeting is meant to take care of the interests of Nigerians, they shunned it…Could it be that the APC is not happy with the news by the police and security agents that they are closing in on the perpetrators of the Nyanya bombing even as they were able to recover the body of the bomber?
“It is certainly more than curious that the APC governors, particularly those whose states are at the thick of the Boko Haram insurgency are the ones who are trying to subvert meetings called to address the malaise…Nigerians should be conscious of their antics and read the body language of the APC. They may make the appropriate noises from time to time, but in the fight against terrorism, actions speak louder than words!”
However,the APC on Thursday denied shunning the meeting, stressing that its governors received a call from the presidency that the meeting had been cancelled.
Not satisfied, the party again, on Friday, through its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said after deliberately excluding the its governors from the security meeting that held on Thursday, the presidency and the PDP then engaged in “outright disinformation and distortion of facts to make it look as if the APC governors deliberately boycotted the meeting, apparently in an effort to make political gain from the whole issue.
“It is now clear that despite their inability to protect lives and property and to stop the terrorists attacks in the country, the presidency and the PDP are not interested in any genuine efforts to end the worsening security situation. It is patently obvious that their aim is to make political capital out of the tragedy that has befallen Nigeria, rather than to ameliorate the cruel fate being daily suffered by the citizens.”
APC said the same presidency that invited all state governors to the expanded National Security Council meeting, which was announced via a statement issued on April 16th by the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Reuben Abati, had no qualms in duping the APC governors out of the meeting and turning it to a parochial meeting of governors of the PDP and its satellite parties, only to shift the blame on the same governors who were conned!
The party said after the presidency publicly invited all state governors to the meeting, it then clandestinely reached out to the APC governors to say the meeting has been called off, only to turn around and blame them for shunning the meeting.
“The Kwara State Government confirmed that its Chief Detail received a call from the presidency to the effect that the meeting had been called off. Then, the Deputy Governor of Borno State, who had already arrived in Abuja for the meeting, also learnt that it has been called off. Curiously, the meeting that was announced publicly by the presidency was not even listed among the President’s official engagement for Thursday.
“Despite all these glaring evidences of a grand plot to exclude APC governors, the President’s assistant on New Media Reno Omokri, the same fellow who tried to malign the suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria using a fake name, took to Twitter to tell the world that the APC governors shunned the meeting and to accuse them of playing politics with national security.
“Unfortunately, while the fallacious Omokri was tweeting lies, the Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum, Gov. Godswill Akpabio, was telling journalists that the APC governors were not invited to the meeting, and that it was initiated by the PDP governors (not minding that the governors of states controlled by APGA and Labour Party were in attendance).
“Who then is lying between the presidency and the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum? Why would the presidency engage in such a grand design just to make the APC governors look bad? Is this a part of the plan to shift the blame for the state of insecurity on the APC and to make the party look bad ahead of the 2015 elections and the preceding ones?
“Is this in furtherance of President Jonathan’s improper blame of the governors of the worst-hit states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe for the insurgency in their states? Can any genuine efforts to resolve the crisis exclude the governors of the three states?
“The Presidency is playing a dangerous game by seeking to make political capital out of an insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives, and done incalculable damage to property and the economy. It is now clear that this Presidency has its eyes firmly fixed on benefitting from the insurgency, and that it had no interest in any genuine measures to end it.
“Were it not so, the presidency and the PDP would not have attempted to deceive the whole nation into believing that the APC Governors shunned a meeting to address the issue. Were it not so, President Jonathan would not have been dancing in Kano, where he went on an illegal electioneering campaign, less than 24 hours after 75 of his compatriots were killed in a bomb blast in Abuja, and even as school girls were being abducted in Borno. Were it not so, the PDP would not have acted to insensitively and irresponsibly by blaming the opposition even as the nation was still grieving,” it said.
APC however reiterated its earlier statement that in the overriding
