One Party/Merger: PDP Mum, LP Undecided As APC, SDP Slam Atiku

A day after former Vice President Atiku Abubakar called on the opposition political parties to merge to resist the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) from turning the country into a one-party system, his platform, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has declined comment on the issue.

When LEADERSHIP contacted some key officials of the party on the matter yesterday, they refused to respond.

However, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has declared that it would not be part of a merger as suggested by the PDP presidential candidate in the last election.

According to SDP, the party is focused on building structures and winning elections and not merging.

The SDP national secretary, Dr Olu Ogunleye, told LEADERSHIP yesterday that the party was not going to be part of Atiku’s proposition.

“We won’t be part of it,” Ogunleye said, insisting SDP is building structures to win future elections.

On its part, the Labour Party (LP) said it would look into Atiku’s call and decide the way forward.

Its national publicity secretary, Obiora Iffoh, said: “It is a proposition which the party will look at. Everything about this government is undemocratic but as a party, we will look at it.”

The ruling APC, however, chided Atiku for accusing it of “increasingly turning Nigeria into a dictatorship of one party.”

Atiku had made the comment on Tuesday at a meeting with the National Executive Council of the Inter-Party Advisory Council of Nigeria (IPAC) in Abuja.

But the ruling party, in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Felix Morka, yesterday said APC was rather strengthening democracy and not stifling it as Atiku had claimed.

Morka said APC welcomed the call by the former vice president on opposition political parties to form a merger to have a formidable opposition front to the party in government.

“It is pitiful that a statesman of Atiku’s standing would so easily conflate the wide acceptance of our great party among Nigerians with his irrational fear of one-party dictatorship.

“Perhaps, the Turakin Adamawa needs to be reminded that Nigerians are highly percipient and can differentiate between the political deviance of the PDP and the demonstrable commitment of the APC to deepening democracy and fostering our common good.”

According to him, before its epic defeat in 2015, the PDP had proclaimed and flaunted its plan to rule Nigeria for a minimum of 60 years, a plan which Atiku did not disdain or disown.

He went: “At that time, Atiku was willfully blind to the fear of a PDP one-party dictatorship but now appears to be under the influence of a distorted vision inflicted by the debilitating serial trouncing of his party at the polls.

“The PDP’s brigandage, impunity and profligacy of 16 years remain unforgettable. In its brief period at the helm, APC has implemented far reaching   reform of the Electoral Act and introduced technological innovations, including the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV), all aimed at improving electoral transparency and deepening our democracy,” he said.

Morka noted that Atiku and PDP had not only consistently failed at the polls, they have proved incapable of offering a credible alternative political vision as expected of an opposition party.