The All Progressives Congress (APC), has accused former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of being responsible for the crisis in the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
National Publicity Secretary of APC, Felix Morka, stated this on Tuesday, saying Atiku’s desperation was stoking the crisis P in the PDP, wondereing why Atiku was blaming the APC.
Atiku had told a national conference on strengthening democracy in Nigeria, on Monday in Abuja, that the country’s democracy was imperilled by excessive judicial involvement in electoral matters, and accused the APC of responsibility.
Morka countered Atiku, saying Atiku’s accusation that President Bola Tinubu was buying off certain opposition leaders a whooping N50 million each was baseless.
He recalled that when Atiku was vice president, particularly between 2003 and 2007, the PDP had the worst elections in the country’s political history, adding that they remember how Atiku’s PDP heavy-handedly captured most South-west states and vowed to remain in power for 60 years.
Morka said it was in those same years that former President Olusegun Obasanjo infamously described the election as a “do-or-die affair” in a desperate attempt to annex Lagos State.
“If democracy was neither derailed nor endangered in those perilous days, is it now that elections are by far freer, fairer and more credible that Nigeria risks losing democracy?” he asked.
Morka said the judicial arm of government was a constitutional creation, like the executive and legislature, with its constitutionally defined powers to adjudicate disputes among citizens and between citizens and the state.
He pointed out that Atiku could not wish away or seek to abolish enshrined powers of the courts to intervene in civil disputes, including electoral disputes, in cases where the authority of the court was validly invoked by a litigant.
Morka stated, “It is a thing of irony that Atiku, who is Nigeria’s most prolific electoral litigator, would make such a ludicrous claim that judicial involvement in electoral matters is a threat to democracy.
“His criticism of the courts and the electoral process rings hollow given his long history of using the courts to further his political agenda. It’s time for him to take a step back and let the democratic process unfold without his interference.
“Nigeria’s democracy is far stronger than Atiku’s political ambitions. We deserve better than petty politicking and alarmist rhetoric from an elder statesman.”
