TheCable

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), General Muhammadu Buhari, poses no threat to whoever emerges its candidate for the 2015 presidential election.

The party said APC’s Buhari has lost three presidential elections and would lose a fourth time should he emerge the presidential candidate of the opposition party.

In a statement signed by PDP spokesman on Saturday, it described as “laughable and lame”, attempts by APC to use the unfortunate Kaduna bomb attacks that affected Buhari’s convoy to absolve itself of blame for encouraging insurgency in the country.

It also described the earlier statements by APC and its governors as failed attempts at image laundering, maintaining that APC’s true identity as a party supportive of violence and disunity in the country is already well-known to all.

“Nigerians will recall that when the news of the attack broke out, the PDP took the high moral ground of condemning the development and sympathised with General Muhammadu Buhari while at the same time calling for a thorough investigation to fish out the perpetrators of the dastardly act,” the statement read.

“We are therefore shocked, disappointed and disgusted that the APC leaders chose to use the ugly development to embark on image laundering. However, their hasty attempts to indict the Presidency and our great party while exonerating themselves from the widely-held notion that they have been promoting insurgency have raised issues regarding what really happened, especially now that a suspect has been arrested.

“Nigerians now ponder; they ask: Was the attack a setup aimed at scoring some political points? If indeed it was an assassination attempt, was it engineered by internal frictions and crisis of ambition within the APC? Has it to do with some other presidential aspirants in the APC seeing General Buhari as a threat and obstacle to their ambitions? Or could it be APC’s desperate strategy of trying to disentangle itself from the internationally-acknowledged link with terrorists and possibly undermine the planned probe of their involvement by the United Kingdom?

“These questions have become completely pertinent considering the fact that General Buhari poses no threat whatsoever to any candidate that the PDP might project.”

The ruling party maintained that APC could not in any way exonerate itself from the insurgency ravaging the country, which it has been promoting through the utterances and actions of its leaders, thinking that the insurgents were after the president and the PDP.

It noted that if APC leaders had joined other well-meaning Nigerians in condemning acts of terrorism at the early stage, those behind them would not have been bold enough to get to the current alarming level.

PDP reaffirmed its commitment to peace and the welfare of all Nigerians, saying its leader, President Goodluck Jonathan, remains a peace-loving, godly and humble man who has continued to reiterate that no political ambition is worth shedding blood for.

“We therefore restate that APC and its leaders (especially General Buhari) pose no threat to any candidate the PDP might have in the general elections as Nigerians have seen that the APC has no agenda other than promoting violence, religious and ethnic division while pursuing selfish and parochial interests. Indeed, they have failed in this laughable and condemnable attempt to launder their horrible image,” it said.