By Musa Umar
The African Democratic Congress Presidential Campaign Council (ADC-PCC) has condemned the inauguration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council in Abuja, describing it as an attempt to impose a one-party dictatorship on Nigeria.
The ADC-PCC Director of Media and Publicity, Kola Ologbondiyan, stated this in a statement on Wednesday while reacting to the inauguration ceremony.
Ologbondiyan alleged that the ruling party was undermining multiparty democracy by coercing opposition governors into its fold or including them in its presidential campaign council despite their refusal to defect from their respective parties.
“What we are witnessing is not politics but political abduction. You cannot claim to be a democrat while using state power to force opposition governors into your party and then drafting them into your campaign council. This is political banditry,” he said.
He accused the APC of pursuing an agenda to concentrate power in the hands of one individual, alleging that national institutions, security agencies and the judiciary were being deployed to weaken opposition forces.
The spokesman urged Nigerians to resist what he described as an immoral political order driven by the desire to retain power at the expense of citizens’ welfare.
He said the ruling establishment had shown little concern for the economic hardship, hunger and insecurity confronting Nigerians.
Ologbondiyan further alleged that the country’s democracy was facing one of its most difficult periods, citing the alleged suppression of dissenting voices, harassment of opposition figures and weakening of democratic institutions for partisan interests.
“Never in our democratic journey have we witnessed this level of intolerance and desperation. The APC government has weaponised poverty, hunger and insecurity to subjugate Nigerians and cripple the opposition.
“This is not the democracy for which Chief M.K.O. Abiola and other martyrs paid the supreme price,” he said.
The ADC-PCC spokesman said the presidential ticket of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and former Rivers Governor Rotimi Amaechi had the experience and democratic credentials required to restore democratic governance and reunite the country.
He specifically described Atiku as a committed democrat with the national reach and political experience to address the country’s challenges and rebuild public confidence in democratic institutions.
“Atiku Abubakar is a democrat to the core. He has the national spread, the capacity and the will to reunite Nigeria and restore our battered democracy, which the APC has destroyed.
“The fate of Nigeria’s democracy rests on him to save it from total collapse,” Ologbondiyan said.
The ADC-PCC called on Nigerians, media organisations, civil society groups and the international community to oppose what it described as the APC’s anti-democratic agenda and support efforts to protect the country’s multiparty democracy.