The President’s senior special adviser on public affairs; Dr Doyin Okupe on Sunday at a press briefing claimed the merger plan by some opposition parties lacks the quality it professes, calling them names.
He also claimed that merger party is made up of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) renegades.
Dr Okupe described the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) as a party of an individual and one that’s bereft of any form of democratic quality and liberalism and lacks internal democracy.
He further described the proposed merger as “incongruous alliance of political weaklings, dysfunctional Lilliputians and repeatedly frustrated political power mongers.”
But the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN’s) national publicity secretary, Mr Lai Muhammed dismisses the claim, saying that the PDP is getting jittery and scared of the opposition.
The National leader of ACN, Mr Bola Tinubu had at the ACN convention stated that “the current government’s trademark is to throw empty words and hollow actions at our problems,” while the leader of the Congress of Progressive Change (CPC) Muhammadu Buhari vowed that APC would resist any move by the PDP to rig elections in 2015.
But Okupe said the arrowheads of the opposition merger lacked “the antecedent that support their claim of possessing what it takes to move Nigeria forward.”
“It is evident that the proposed merger revolves around two personalities only, Senator Tinubu and Gen. Buhari. Unfortunately, both are heavily burdened political liabilities” he said.
He also claimed that promoters of the APC were desperate to “supplant the Jonathan administration, forgetting that one million giant ants can never muster the required strength to lift a concrete pole much less of a nationally entrenched pillar and structurally established institution like the PDP.”
Dr Okupe did not mince words against the national leader of ACN, inferring the the former governor of Lagos state; Bola Tinubu, who has insistently made disparaging comments against the federal government, left a bad record in office when he held sway as the governor of the one of the richest state in Nigeria.
Outsourcing Presidential Candidates
The Presidential aide in his criticism of the major parties in the APC merger, called the ACN a “motley assembly” that lacks internal democracy and “notorious for outsourcing its presidential candidates from the PDP.”
“It is noteworthy that the major plank of this motley assembly, the ACN, is notorious for outsourcing its presidential candidate from the ranks of the same PDP they gleefully villify.
“In 2003, their choice was Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, who now knows them better. In 2011, it was a protégé of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, who filled the slot although he was later betrayed and sacrificed on the altar of self-interest.”
“Presently, the debates within the factionalised alliance suggest that they will not mind fielding another PDP stalwart as their presidential candidate.”
He also claimed that the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) “had existed for 13 years without any meaningful impact on the polity,”
Okupe said that the administration of Tinubu in Lagos State was characterised by labour crisis and that it did not at any time attain 60 per cent budget implementation.
“The leader of the opposition, Chief Bola Tinubu, who spoke disparagingly about the Federal Government on a number of issues was once a governor of Nigeria’s richest state for eight years and we all have a record of what he made of that position” he said.
On the National Chairman of the ACN, Chief Bisi Akande, he noted that when he (Akande) was the governor of Osun State, workers were denied N5,500 minimum wage.
He added that the Akande regime laid off over 9,000 workers during its four years in office
