The main opposition party in a statement on Wednesday had alleged that about fifty of its members have been listed for arrest as part of an orchestrated plot by the ruling party to muscle the former ahead of 2015 general elections.
But addressing a media briefing on Thursday, National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Bolaji Abdullahi dismissed the claim as a creation of the PDP to preempt the anti-corruption agency, the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC) which he noted has been inviting former governors for questioning based on petitions, arising from individuals over alleged financial sleaze while they were in office.
He said: ‘‘It is good that the press briefing is ending on a very hilarious note because I don’t know who is making that allegation and it would have been better that the person rolls out the names in the list of persons to be arrested.
‘’It is a time worn strategy to pre-empt. Some couple of former governors are invited by the EFCC for questioning on their financial conduct during their tenure in office. One way to pre-empt that is to
claim that there is a threat to muscle the opposition.
‘’We have said that as a political party, we don’t arrest and if anybody has a case, the person should go and deal with it instead of politicizing it. We are concerned with the art of winning elections as
a party not arresting anybody.
Abdullahi equally dismissed allegation that the APC was planning to rig the Anambra governorship election.
‘’We believe strongly that the speculation of APC deploring soldiers to rig Anambra election is just a mere rumour because there is no evidence to that and if anybody tells you that the party is
planning to deploy Civil Defence, police, soldiers or whatever to do anything in Anambra, tell the person to provide the evidence.
‘’We are planning to win the election, fair and square and if you are following the campaign going on, you will know the impact that our candidate is making. The incumbent will naturally be jittery and when a candidate is jittery the first thing he will do is to turn around and accuse the ruling party of planning to rig or whatever.
‘’We are not going to rig the election. We have won elections since we came to power as a national party and as a ruling party. We have equally lost elections. We lost the election in Osun and if we have soldiers and police and whatever to mobilize why didn’t we do it? We have lost couple of House of Representatives elections and couple of Senate elections.
‘’So, the speculation that we are planning to rig the election doesn’t hold waters. Unless they have credible evidence that this is what we are planning to do but to make this kind of allegation is not what we should dwell on too much.’’
It isn't the question of politicizing corruption charges; the dominant issue is that the exercise has been selective and prejudicial. Even a foreigner has had the courage to let you in on this anomalous taint.
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