As the 2015 general elections draw near, the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has informed of its readiness to create an open platform for interaction between the party and the public to enable the party present people-oriented manifestoes ahead of the 2015 general election.
The party said all Nigerians, irrespective of their party affiliations would be welcomed to join the conversation.
John Odigie-Oyegun, national chairman of APC, unfolded the party’s plan at a briefing at the party’s secretariat in Abuja.
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According to him, the question of what APC stands for has been on the lips on every Nigerian, hence the need to create the forum.
“Many well-meaning Nigerians have asked me who we are; beginning from today we are going to have a weekly conversation with the Nigerian People to say who we are. All Nigerians, irrespective of their current party affiliation, who are dissatisfied with their personal circumstances and the national drift, and desire a change, are welcomed to join this movement led by the APC.
“Our movement is programmed to create a new Nigeria of which we will all, without exception, be proud. With people’s overwhelming support and the free expression of their wills, represented by their votes, the All Progressive’s Congress will by the grace of God next year commence the challenging but necessary process of charting a more secure and more prosperous future for us all,” Oyegun said
The chairman, who said the party’s candidates for all elective positions in the February 2015 elections would emerge in few weeks, stressed the party’s readiness to conduct all processes for the selection of its candidates in strict and transparent manner with compliance with the party rules.
“We will put forward candidates who will truly represent the people and work for a future full of hope, confidence, progress and peace. We have no doubt that Nigerians will vote for these candidates we will put up, because they will be agents of change, and they will be standing against agents of the status quo, who want to perpetuate this culture of deceit, divisiveness, incompetence and impunity that has continued to hold Nigeria back,” he said.
Speaking on the withdrawal of the security details of the speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, who recently defected to the APC, Oyegun said the action was an “high unprecedented scale of impunity that has been the central feature of the PDP-led administration”
“We see this impunity on display in the administration’s tyrannical reaction to the exercise of the right of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal to change his party. The police arrogated to itself the power of the judiciary to interpret the Constitution and withdrew the security details of the speaker.
“The illegal and high-handed action by the police in removing the security details of a sitting speaker of the House of Representatives has attracted strong and widespread condemnation from within and outside Nigeria. The Department of Security Services, a service which was hitherto insulated from partisan politics, has also been directed and has similarly withdrawn its operatives from the speaker,” he said.
KEHINDE ABDULSALAM
