APC Warns PDP Against Plan To Remove 5 Governors For Defection

Posted by African Examiner Ayo Balogun, Featured, Latest Headlines, News Thursday, December 5th, 2013

Ayo Balogun, Lagos

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has strongly warned the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) not to go ahead with its diabolical plan to declare vacant the seats of the five PDP Governors who recently defected to the APC, saying apart from being illegal and smacking of double standard, such a move has the potential to plunge the polity into chaos.

In a statement issued on Thursday in Abuja by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said that even as the PDP has continued to lick the mortal wound inflicted on it by the loss of five preeminent Governors in one fell swoop, any attempt by the party (PDP) to act in desperation and declare the Governors’ seats vacant will be met with an unprecedented show of people power that will end, once and for all, the impunity of the PDP and the Presidency.

”We have irrefutable evidence that the PDP is desperately shopping for a pliant Judge who will be heavily induced to declare vacant the seats of the five Governors who recently defected to the APC. We also have the name of the lawyers who have been retained by the PDP for this hatchet job.

”We are in possession of the various nefarious legal options being explored by the villainous duo of the PDP and the Presidency but we hereby serve a strong notice to the duo that any attempt by anyone through any means other than what is provided for in section 188 of the 1999 Constitution as amended will not only have grave consequences but will leave the polity severely bruised,’ it stated.

According to APC, ”we know the PDP and the Presidency are anarchic and nihilistic, and will not mind to pursue any narrow and selfish objective, even if doing such can plunge the nation into crisis. But their cup is gradually getting full. Having got away with their trademark impunity in Delta and Anambra States, these lawless, reckless and feckless duo of malfeasance now believe they can continue to act without regards to the laws of the land and with no scintilla of decency.

”We wish to state unequivocally that should the PDP go ahead with this plan, there will be widespread repercussions as the APC has resolved that henceforth, every act of impunity of the PDP and the Presidency will be met with stiff resistance in the form of a vociferous telegraphing of people power, the likes of which have not been witnessed in these parts.”

APC reminded the PDP and the Presidency that a party that boasted of 16 governors and still counting and has control of the National Assembly had what it takes to use people power to stop acts of impunity, disregard for the laws of the land and barbaric brigandage – and that is exactly what the APC will do in the event of any unlawful declaration of the five governors’ seats vacant.

The party also warned against any attempt by the PDP and the Presidency to turn back the hands of the clock as far as the cleaning up of the judiciary is concerned, by inducing a servile and disreputable Judge to do the duo’s bidding.

”We recognize the efforts of the present CJN to sanitize the Judiciary since she assumed the mantle of leadership but she should not allow any black leg to reverse the gains that have been recorded on the altar of unmitigated avarice. This is because if that happens, Nigerians will hold the Judiciary vicariously liable for the catastrophic consequences that may follow,” it said.

Accusing the PDP of engaging in double standard, APC said ”for all of 14 years, elected members of the State Houses of Assembly as well as the National Assembly have been defecting mostly to the PDP and no court has ever declared their seats vacant.