APC Insists That Attack On Jonathan's Convoy Was Staged By PDP Members

The All Progressives Congress (APC) have called on the Inspector-General of Police to investigate the stoning of President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign convoy in Bauchi last week.

The call followed the revelation by Bauchi State Governor Isa Yuguda that the attack was stage-managed by unnamed Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stalwarts.

APC’s National Publicity Secretary Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement in Lagos yesterday, said the investigation was necessary because of the criminal nature of the attack and the attempt to blame the APC.

‘’We stand by our earlier statement in which we accused the PDP of sponsoring the attacks on President Jonathan in Katsina and Bauchi as part of its devillish plan to demonise the opposition and force a postponement of next month’s general elections, and we are glad we have been proved right,’’ the party said.

The APC added that it was apparent that the PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation was out of tune with developments within its own party, “hence, its spokesman considers the APC’s statement that the attack was orchestrated by the PDP, as ‘absurd and reckless’, without a shred of evidence to support that specious argument”.

The APC also added that the excitable and garrulous Femi Fani-Kayode rushed to the press to condemn the APC, in his usual skittish self, without taking the pains to know what Governor Yuguda and a top official of his party, the PDP, said about the attack. 

“Since he will rather learn about the happenings in his party from outsiders, we will like to quote what Governor Yuguda said on the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and reported by Daily Trust and other media outlets on Sunday: ‘I am sure and I want to let the world know that the people who did this thing were PDP members, and those politicians in Abuja were the ones behind it; they were not APC members. They found these youths on the road and gave them brooms and they instructed them that when the president was passing, they should raise the brooms and pelt them at him’.”

The party hoped that Fani-Kayode would allow himself a rare moment of sobriety by admitting that he goofed in pitching a wrong position, and then follow up with a public apology to Nigerians for misleading them.