“How APC plans to re-loot $311m Abacha fund to private pockets – PDP”
The above was one of the headlines of the press release issued by the PDP, and carried by major newspapers over the recently repatriated Abacha loot.The press release which is very watery in content looked like what is called “preemptive strike” in international politics.
PDP as an opposition party, just like every Nigerian has every right to demand for accountability, even though it doesn’t have a culture of accountability itself, but it could still have gone ahead to call for the appropriation of the said fund by the National Assembly as it also mentioned without throwing up the wild allegation of planned re-looting of it.
The PDP also took the pedestrian path of accusing a “Cabal” in the presidency of being behind the plot to re-loot the repatriated fund, without any form of empirical evidence.
This is what the party has been doing since it lost power at the centre in 2015, especially since after the last general election, sadly, the same PDP has shown inexplicable intolerance to dissenting views in states where it holds sway. It has gone ahead to apply violence against critics and journalists, and demonstrated nauseating penchant for using economically disadvantaged but exploited youths to lay siege and unleash verbal venom against members of the opposition in its controlled states.
In Abia where accountability is at a zero level,they are quick to trivialise every criticism directed at the government, no matter how factual or constructive. They stoke the embers of hate and division by unjustly elevating sectional jingoism in times of critical discuss, and consistently employ the services of thugs and other misguided elements to carry out physical attacks as well as make irresponsible threats against innocent citizens in a desperate bid to subdue opposition voices and cut off the rest of the country from gaining knowledge of its incompetence and misrule in Abia.
When people who have pedigree and track record of excellence in leadership like Peter Obi and a few others criticize the government, you can pay attention to them, but when PDP as a party that is driven by a desperate quest to return to power resorts to reckless attacks, without executing the most elementary task of internal scrutiny of itself, the party ends up becoming an object of ridicule.
Somebody should remind the PDP that the Federal government is neither owing salary nor pension arrears, unlike what’s happening in a PDP controlled state of Abia where many workers are suffering and pensioners being sent to their early graves. The party can show its pro-people altruism and empathy by calling on those in charge in Abia to behave well, and by so doing we would be convinced that they want the best for all Nigerians.
Hypocrisy is not a virtue, rather a vice that should not be displayed in the midst of discerning minds.