NKRUMAH BANKONG-OBI/Lafia
The governing All Progressives Congress, APC, in Nasarawa State has warned the Opposition Peoples Democratic party, PDP to stop creating and expanding non-existent fault lines in the State. It also accused the party of adopting divisive politics along ethnicity, religion and indigeneship as a strategy in its quest to attain power in the State. This was admonition was during a press conference addressed by the state Chairman, Hon. Aliyu Bello, at the APC State headquarters in Lafia on Wednesday.
Going down memory lane, Bello said since the return to civil rule in1999, Abdullahi Adamu, Aliyu Akwe Doma and Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, all from different senatorial zones, have governed the State in line with the vision of the founding fathers who fought for the creation of the State to ensure fairness and equity. He wondered when governance of the State is now determined by ethnicity, religion or tribe. “In their desire to gain power through the back door, the PDP in the State are orchestrating an evil propaganda aimed at bringing disharmony among the people of Nasarawa State, who have been coexisting as one big family, and citizens of Nigeria, from time immemorial.”
The APC which was speaking officially since the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja upturned the verdict of the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, GEPT, which annulled the election of Governor Abdullahi said “At the promptings of its leadership, the PDP supporters are now classifying the people of Nasarawa State as indigenes and non- indigenes. They are seditiously calling on their imagined “indigenous people of Nasarawa State” to unite and kick against the Court of Appeal judgement which has rightly reversed the Judgement of the State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, by returning to Governor Sule, the popular mandate given to him by majority of the electorates after the Saturday, March 18, 2023 elections,” he said in respect of the post-Appeal Court judgment that rocked Lafia last Saturday.
The party Chairman noted that blackmailing the Appeal Court jurists was an indication of failure. He challenged the PDP to focus on pursuing their appeal at the Supreme Court, if they were sure that they stand any chance, given the weak grounds upon which their case is built.
Bello said the PDP’s call on the international community to intervene in the affairs of Nasarawa State was unwarranted and ill-informed. He therefore called on security agencies to keep an eye on the PDP and it leaders for its utterances. “We consider it appropriate at this juncture to comment on the call by the PDP on the International Community to intervene in the internal affairs of Nasarawa State. Surely this call is stupendous. If anything, it only goes to show that the PDP has gone out of its wits in the desperate search for ways and means to acquire political power, at whatever cost, since it has failed to do so through the ballot box.
We therefore appeal to security agencies in the State to keep the PDP under their radars, in order to checkmate it from doing something unthinkable, and negative to the detriment of our dear Nasarawa State and its peace-loving people.”
Pix: Bello Aliyu speaks to the media