The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said Nigeria may cease to exist if the All Progressives Congress (APC) wins 2023 presidential election. The party also seeks a strong opposition among opposition political parties in the country against misrule by the ruling party.
The PDP National Chairman- elect, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, who spoke when he received the leadership of the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), said it is the duty of opposition parties to educate Nigerians that eight more years of APC will be disaster for the country.
CUPP was formed before the 2019 general election to work against the re-election of APC for another term of office. Ayu told his guests that Nigeria will break up if the APC forms the next government, “because they are the biggest cancer affecting Nigeria.”
He listed the maladministration of the APC government to include nepotism, mismanagement of the nation’s economy, accumulation of foreign debts, devaluation of the nation’s currency, etc., and said these were the issues PDP was tackling.
“Things have gone wrong and it is the responsibility of every political party to point them out and provide alternative ways of tackling them, and I believe that if we join hands together we will change this country to be better.
“Nigeria seems to have the worst currency in Africa (even) Somalia that is a failed state is doing better than Nigeria. Our currency is a free fall. That is because we are an import-dependent economy.
“The quality of lives of Nigerians is going down, N10,000 before APC took over is now a N100, 000. Our people cannot live a healthy, quality of life. “So, I charge all of you to strengthen Nigeria so that more voices will be speaking about that; it shouldn’t just be PDP,” Ayu advised.
The PDP chairman-elect stated that though Nigeria practises multi-party democracy, political parties should not concern themselves with just campaigning and winning elections alone.
He reminded them that Green Party in Germany, and in most European countries, is concerned with only environment issues. “When they started in the 80s people didn’t take them seriously; but today the issue of environment is centered by them,” he noted.
CUPP Spokesperson Ikenga Ugochinyere, who led the group, recalled that PDP engineered the formation of CUPP as a strong coalition to mobilise Nigerians against the APC government, adding that everybody is looking up to Ayu at this period things have gone wrong in the country.
He expressed the hope that the new PDP administration would work with the CUPP “to rebuild the coalition to make it stronger this time around so that together all of us can work and ensure that the country gets the kind of leadership they deserve in 2023.
“And, again, it is important to say this: as long as we are concerned, the oppositions lawmakers in the parliament have tried, but they have not been used ultimately.
“We strongly believe that once you are sworn in, part of the things you ought to do is to find a way to re-energise our lawmakers in the parliament, because we need them to be able to push the frontiers of the party.”
