2019 election: Our party not desperate to win at all costs — APC

All Progressives Congress, APC, has reacted to threats by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to boycott the 2019 general elections, saying such threat was borne out of the fact that the opposition party now understands that its end is near.


But the PDP, yesterday, said the duo of President Muhammadu Buhari and National Chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole, have become jittery over the mega-coalition it has with 38 other political groups, with just seven months to the 2019 general elections.

National Chairman of the APC, Oshiomhole, stated this, weekend, when he received the report of Governor Abdulaziz Yari’s Governorship Primary Election Committee for Osun State.

While declaring that the ruling party was not desperate to win the next general elections, Oshiomhole said PDP had continued to press the panic button because its rigging machine had been dismantled while it no longer had free access to federal resources.

He said: “Let me also use this opportunity to comment on what I read about the PDP chairman. I heard him threatening that they may boycott the 2019 general elections. When a rabbit in the afternoon jumps out of its hole, not because the hunter has come to smoke it out and it is running, you will know that it has already seen its end.

‘’The truth is that we are not desperate, we have worked hard to defeat PDP while they were in power, when they had no faction, when all the founding fathers and founding mothers were in the same house.

“Nigerian people rejected them on account of 16 years of absolute misrule at the peak of our prosperity as a nation when oil sold for $140 per barrel and we came in when oil price has dropped.

“If with all those huge revenue that accrued to them, people complained of bad roads, whether from the South to East from the North to the West, they have nothing new to offer to the Nigerian people.

“I think they are haunted by their own ghost and this is because they had perpetrated a do-or-die politics and they are on record that election matters are do-or-die affairs.

“One of their old men was recorded as saying that they perfected the language of rigging. Now, rigging machines have been dismantled and their problem is how can they survive without them.”

On the forthcoming governorship election in Osun State, the party chairman expressed optimism that the APC would retain power in the state.

He said:  “First, I am very excited that you did a fantastic job because we are going to try a new method.  We needed men and women of integrity who cannot be compromised, who have the courage and from my interaction, our people any day, anywhere they can stand their grounds on what they believe in.

“You can’t influence them, you can’t buy them, you can’t bend, you will either agree to stand by the truth or you fall out and I am glad that you have brought all of those qualities to bear and the result is that we have a panel, which people could not question its integrity.

“So, I want to thank you for accepting this assignment. We accept this report in line with the provisions of our constitution and we have set up, in line with our rules, an appeal panel because, however, clean a report appears to be, members of our party, who may be aggrieved either for the right reasons or for the wrong reasons, have the right of appeal that our party constitution provides for.”

Buhari, Oshiomhole jittery over our grand coalition — PDP

Meanwhile, PDP said, yesterday, that President Buhari and Oshiomhole, where jittery over the mega coalition between it  and 38 other political groups, barely seven months to 2019 general elections.

The party said Oshiomhole’s resort to insults directed at the PDP betrayed “the confusion of a depressed politician seeking to cover his personal vacuity and inner fears of the inevitable defeat awaiting President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC in 2019.”

In a statement issued by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party took a swipe at what it described as the hypocrisy of Oshiomhole, who, having earlier dismissed members of the Reformed All Progressives Congress, R-APC, as ‘inconsequential’, later paid a nocturnal visit to its chairman, Buba Galadima, in what appeared a fence-mending gesture.

“The PDP holds nothing but pity for Oshiomhole, who is now licking his own vomit by going around cap in hand and begging the same compatriots whom he earlier called names like ‘inconsequential’, ‘hungry birds’ and ‘tired feet’, not to leave his sinking party.

“Unfortunately for Oshiomhole and his presidential sponsor, events of the weeks ahead will clear all doubts that APC is dead and that Oshiomhole is just an undertaker, whose job is to cremate the derelict contraption by oppressors, who are falsely hailing themselves as messiahs.

“Very soon, Oshiomhole and President Buhari would find themselves alone in the cursed ‘Black Pearl’ that the APC has irredeemably become.

“While we understand Oshiomhole’s frustration over his inability to stop the coalition, the fact remains that he and President Buhari are fighting a lost battle in trying to destroy it.”