TheCable

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Jonathan administration of throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Muhammadu Buhari instead of showing evidence of performance in the past six years.

“We believe that elections should be about issues that will be beneficial to the electorate, not about throwing everything but the kitchen sink at a particular candidate simply because of his soaring acceptability,” the party said on Sunday through Lai Mohammed, its spokesman.

“Therefore, it is time for the PDP to end the muckraking and tell Nigerians how it plans to tackle the worsening insecurity in the land, the collapsing national currency, with the US dollar now exchanging for 215 Naira, massive unemployment, especially among the youth, decayed infrastructure and the unprecedented corruption under President Jonathan’s watch.”

It alleged that the essence of PDP’s “campaign of calumny” against Buhari was to distract it from telling Nigerians how it plans to effect the much-needed change from zero to purposeful governance, and also to sweep under the carpet failures of the Jonathan administration.

“In both instances, the PDP has failed, as Nigerians have refused to be swayed by all the scandal mongering by the PDP, while the APC has remained focused in selling its game-changing manifesto to the citizenry,” the APC said.

The party charged the PDP and President Jonathan to tell Nigerians what happened to the $20-billion missing oil funds, amid concerns that the money could have vanished into the ruling party’s slush funds for electioneering campaign.

“Nigerians are also asking: Mr President, where are the Chibok girls who were abducted nine months ago, and whom you promised to reunite with their families? What happened to the stage-managed truce with Boko Haram and why has no one been punished for deceiving Nigerians? Mr President, where is the report of the forensic audit you ordered into the missing $20billion oil funds? It is now two months since the deadline set by your finance minister for the release of that audit report. Will the report go the way of others before it?

“Mr President, why are our soldiers being sent to battle Boko Haram without the necessary equipment, even though trillions of Naira have been budgeted for the security and defence sector under your watch? Why are soldiers having to buy even their uniforms and the wounded among them financing their medical treatment, as some soldiers said in a CNN interview?

“Mr President, why have you castrated the anti-corruption agencies, rendering them comatose and unable to tackle the runaway corruption under your watch? What signals are you sending to the EFCC, for example, when you picked as your campaign spokesman the same man who is facing corruption charges? Is that a way of telling the EFCC to let the notorious suspect off the hook.

“Mr President, you vowed that those involved in the N2.6 trillion fuel subsidy scam will never go unpunished, but many months later none has been punished and it is back to business as usual. When will you consider stealing of public funds a serious act of corruption, sir?

“Mr President, you said while campaigning for the 2011 elections that ‘four years is enough for anyone to make significant improvement, and if I can’t improve on power within this period, it means I cannot do anything’. Why should Nigerians trust you to deliver on your promises this time around, now that the power situation has gone from bad to worse under your watch?

“Mr President, instead of creating jobs for the teeming unemployed youth of Nigeria, your administration has been fleecing and sending them to their early graves, as it happened during the fraudulent Immigration recruitment exercise in March 2014 when many innocent youths got death instead of jobs? When will you move from creating phantom jobs to real jobs? These are the issues that are bothering Nigerians and these are the issues they want answers to, instead of engaging in an unprecedented personality-focused campaign.”

APC reasoned that PDP and President Jonathan did not have any answers to the issues it raised, “hence they have decided to engage in a multi-pronged approach of mudslinging, campaign for election postponement and the instigation of violence to scuttle next month’s general election, among others”.