Call your wife to order, party tells Jonathan
You’re raising false alarm, says PDP
By Bode Olagoke and Samuel Ogidan, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused the federal government of planning to deposit a large sum of money into the bank account of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, in order to frame one of its leaders, Senator Bola Tinubu.
Addressing a press conference on Wednesday in Lagos, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the plan is to use that as a reason to sack Jega so that he would not preside over the elections rescheduled for March 28 and April 11.
“There is a plot to transfer a humongous amount of money into the bank account of the INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, and then claim that the money came from Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the APC in order to justify the ongoing plan to sack Prof. Jega so he won’t organise the elections,” he said.
He also revealed that the government was also planning to use some political parties described as “satellites” of the
ruling party, to push for the postponement of the elections again.
Mohammed said: “The 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 ongoing counter-insurgency 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 that there is a plan to use the security agencies to intimidate key opposition leaders as well as the Nigerian Communications Commission and telecommunications service providers to disrupt voice and data transmission, especially in APC strongholds, on Election Day.
“It is no longer news that a signal has been sent to all state commands of the DSS (SSS) to get the list of all INEC Returning Officers and Adhoc Staff before March 10th.
“There is also the ongoing illegal recruitment of over 500 new cadets into one of the country’s security outfits, 50 per cent of whom are from the home state of the outfit’s top brass, in violation of the provisions of the Constitution, especially as
the recruitment does not reflect the Federal Character.
“Huge funds are being provided for retired and serving security personnel to buy up PVCs, with the hope that they can be used once the card reader is compromised.”
He recalled a case in court that sought to declare the use of the card readers in the forthcoming elections unconstitutional.
“In the days leading up to the elections, the Jonathan Administration is planning to give the opposition the Ekiti treatment by massively arresting key opposition leaders, with a view to destabilising their ranks, putting them away and paving the way for a free rein of their rigging agents.
“Towards this end, thousands of signed blank detention orders have been procured.
“As part of the plan to implicate our leaders, illegal substances may be put into their checked-in luggage during local and international flights. That is why we are calling on our leaders to travel only with their carry-on baggage.”
In its reaction yesterday, the PDP said the allegation of planned rigging of the general elections by the APC was a reflection of the character, inner thoughts and ideology of its leaders.
in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, the PDP said Nigerians are not surprised that the APC has officially adopted the use of fabrications, having exhausted its fake campaign promises which were not able to upstage the verifiable achievements of the Jonathan administration.
It said: “Indeed, Nigerians are not surprised at the contents of the recent false alarms by the APC as they are undoubtedly a reflection of the character, inner thoughts and ideology of its leaders.
“These ignoble ideas are clearly incompatible with the ideology of the PDP and President Jonathan who has overtime demonstrated the qualities of a true democrat and not a reformed one.”
It reminded the APC that under the current financial system, it is practically impossible to transfer the so-called humongous amount of money into any bank account without the source being traced by relevant independent financial monitoring bodies like the EFCC.
The party said the APC’s allegation was suspect and betrayed an attempt to cover up. It asked the opposition to tell Nigerians if it has already been paying monies into accounts of INEC officials and some institutions of government with a view to compromising them.
According to the PDP, “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.
“We have also noted the hues and cries of the opposition regarding the issue of PVCs and card readers for the elections but Nigerians are not short in their memory to recall that it is not the PDP but APC that had issues with security agencies over attempts to hack into INEC’s data base and to clone the PVCs.”
The PDP also debunked the allegations of plans to use security agencies to intimidate or implicate opposition leaders, describing such as a “part of APC’s worn-out antics of attempting to use nuisance alarm to heat up the system, having failed to articulate credible manifesto to secure genuine followership among Nigerians.”
Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Organisation (APCPCO) has described the First Lady as “an incredibly crude woman,” but thanked Nigerians for putting up with her.
The Buhari campaign team, therefore, urged President Goodluck Jonathan to call his wife to order, saying, “It is not only insulting for Mrs Jonathan to describe the presidential candidate of APC, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), as ‘brain-dead’, it is also demeaning of her status as the First Lady.”
A statement issued by Director of Media and Publicity of APCPCO, Malam Garba Shehu, yesterday in Abuja, observed that it was discourteous and inexcusable for a wife of any president with a modicum of decency to make such a false and infantile pronouncement about the health status of another man on account of politics.
It recalled that in recent time, Dame Patience Jonathan had made statements invoking violence like she did in Calabar over the weekend when she urged PDP supporters to “stone” all those canvassing for change.
Shehu said it was below the standard of a wife of a president to stoop so low to call for violent attacks against members of the opposition.
He said while a good number of Nigerians are not taken by surprise by Mrs. Jonathan’s recent “incredulous pronouncements”, it is important for her husband to “put her in bridles” in the spirit of the Abuja Peace Accord.
The APCPCO similarly argued that much as indecent and disgraceful the outbursts of Mrs. Jonathan was in attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of Nigerians about her husband’s incompetence to lead the country, it is typical of the PDP’s modus operandi to confuse Nigerians with mundane issues instead of the issues of corruption, for which her husband has achieved “an unbeaten record”; his appalling lack capacity to secure life and property of citizens and a glaring incompetence in dealing with the challenges facing the economy.