PDP tackles APC over Jega, polls shift plot
The opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) has raised alarm that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led federal government has continued to monitor the movement and telephone conversations of its leaders on a daily basis, adding that the government is planning to scuttle the re-scheduled general elections.
APC national publicity secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who was accompanied by the director of publicity, Buhari/Osinbajo presidential campaign organisation, Malam Garba Shehu, at a press conference yesterday in Lagos, also accused the PDP of corruption.
But the PDP in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Olisa Metuh, described the allegations as lies and baseless, adding that the press conference addressed by Lai Mohammed justified the ruling party’s stands on the APC being a party of ‘one week, one lie’.
The APC spokesman in the statement said: “there was a plot to transfer a huge amount of money into the bank account of the INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, and then claim that the money came from Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the APC in order to justify the on-going plan to sack Professor Jega so he won’t conduct the elections.”
“Beyond Jega, there is also a plan to credit the bank accounts of some key national institutions with huge amounts of money purportedly from our party, the APC, ostensibly to compromise those institutions. Another plot is to get the parties to address a press conference to say the elections should not hold in the North-East until September 2015, because of the on-going counterinsurgency battle there. The intention is to make sure Jega’s tenure expires before the polls, so that they can appoint a malleable card-carrying member of the PDP as INEC Chair to conduct the polls,” he added.
But the PDP spokesman Olisa Metuh said: “We challenge the APC to come out clear on the actual link between its leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, whose antecedents and reputation are well known to all, and the said transfer plot. Was Tinubu’s name also dropped by the APC as a strategy to pre-empt findings by anti-graft agencies in a bid to cover a crime?
“Whilst we note that nothing is beyond a desperate party like the APC, which has continued to manifest its crass lack of integrity, we charge relevant agencies to immediately investigate the allegations and possibly unravel its evil plots,” he added.