TheCable

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has urged Suleiman Abba, the inspector-general of police, to institute a probe into the stoning of President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign convoy in Bauchi last week, following the revelation by a top Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) member that the attack was stage-managed by unnamed PDP stalwarts.

Isa Yuguda, Bauchi state governor, had claimed that the attackers of Jonathan’s convoy were PDP supporters, absolving the APC of blame in the matter.

Speaking on Monday through Lai Mohammed, its spokesman, the party argued that the investigation was necessary in view of the criminal nature of the attack, and the attempt to shift the blame on the APC.

“We stand by our earlier statement in which we pointedly accused the PDP of sponsoring the attacks on President Jonathan in Katsina and Bauchi as part of its devilish plan to demonise the opposition and force a postponement of next month’s general election, and we are glad we have been proved right,” it said.

According to the APC, it is now apparent that the PDP presidential campaign organisation is out of tune with developments within its own party, hence its spokesman considers APC’s statement that the attack was orchestrated by the PDP as “absurd and reckless”, without a shred of evidence to support that specious argument.

“The excitable and garrulous Femi Fani-Kayode rushed to the press to condemn the APC, in his usual skittish self, without taking the pains to know what Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State and a top official of his party, the PDP, said about the attack. That action is what is absurd, reckless and asinine,” the party said.

“Since he will rather learn about the happenings in his party from outsiders, we will like to quote what Yuguda said on the Hausa Service of the BBC and reported by Daily Trust and other media outlets on Sunday: ‘I am sure and let the world know that the people who did this thing were PDP members and those politicians in Abuja were the ones behind it; they were not APC members. They found these youths on the road and gave them brooms and they instructed them that when the president was passing they should raise the brooms and pelt them at him.”

The party expressed the hope that Fani-Kayode would allow himself  moment of sobriety by admitting that he goofed terribly in pitching a wrong position, and then followed up with a public apology to Nigerians for misleading them.