The attention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kwara State has been drawn to a statement by the factional governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, where he accused our party of planning to disrupt his campaign.
In the statement, the factional APC gubernatorial candidate alleged that our party in connivance with the State government plans to bring thugs with dangerous weapons in to the State to disrupt his campaign.
Ordinarily, we would have ignored Abdulrahman’s false claim as the ranting of a confused and clueless man but have decided to respond in order to set the record straight and correct the negative impressions.
There is no iota of truth in Abdulrahman’s allegation, which is designed to cast the PDP in bad light. The PDP is not planning to and will never import thugs into the State to disrupt any campaign. We challenge the APC factional candidate to provide evidence to back his claim or forever bury his head in shame.
We want to let the members of the public know that our partymembers and leaders are disciplined and decent people that cannot be used as thugs to disrupt any rally not to talk of using them to wear unauthorised clothes to cause mayhem of any sort in the smState.
As a responsible and peace-loving party, we will never disrupt the campaign of any party nor engage in political violence to win election. Inversely, the APC are the purveyors of violence and we have always alerted security agencies to their violent tendencies. The various cases of political clashes within the APC are in the public domain and are well reported.
It is unfortunate that rather than campaigning on issues and telling Kwarans their plans, Abdulrahman and the APC have instead chosen to engage in frivolities, scare-mongering, fabrication of lies and dangerous propaganda ahead of the election.
We do not need hoodlums neither do we bank on any federal might to win election. We are solely relying on the support of the good people of Kwara State to win the forthcoming poll and this is why we have continued to engage them in our campaigns.
Our governorship candidate, Hon. Razak Atunwa has met with several groups of people in the State including professionals and actors in the private sector to intimate them of his plans for Kwara and Kwarans. Likewise, our leader and Senate President, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki has been going round local governments in the State to canvass support for our party.
This is what responsible and focused political parties and their candidates do during electioneering, and not engaging in frivolities like the Kwara APC and its candidates are currently doing.
We also wish to note that the allegations raised by the APC that members of our party or supporters of our leader, Dr. Bukola Saraki were behind the removal or destruction of some offensive political billboards in Offa and Erin-Ile, is totally false and misleading.
The two regulatory body overseeing the erection of billboards in the State, the Kwara State Signage and Advertisement Agency (KWASAA) and the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) pulled down the affected political billboards as a result of noncompliance with laid down rules and guidelines.
We wonder why the APC would then blame the consequence of their failure to follow due process on our party and leader.
We strongly believe that the APC and its candidates are merely crying wolf and jittery of the imminent defeat that awaits them in the 2019 general election, which is causing them to continually raise false alarms and allegations against our party.
The Kwara PDP wishes to restate its commitment to peaceful conduct of electoral process in the state and it is on this premise that our party will not be involved in any political violence of any sort before, during and after this forthcoming general elections in the State.
Signed:
Tunde Ashaolu,
State Publicity Secretary,
Kwara PDP.
