The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said on Sunday that the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) deserves to be deregistered for failing both as ruling party and as an opposition party.
The minister stated this on Sunday in Lagos at a media briefing to give update and clarifications on the released Dapchi schoolgirls.
The minister specifically berated the party for “disgraceful and insensitive politics that the PDP has been playing with the abduction and release of the Dapchi girls”.
“What called for non-partisan celebrations was rather thoughtlessly turned into politics, bad, despicable politics that has no place in any democracy.”
“At times of national tragedies, countries unite. This is the norm everywhere.”
“Indeed, there should be a new criterion for withdrawing the registration of a party like the PDP which has failed both as a ruling and an opposition party!
“If a party cannot rule and cannot be in opposition, what else can it do?” he said.
But in a reaction this evening, the PDP said the call by Mohammed as part of “a clandestine plot” by the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government to “strangulate the main opposition party and plot the way for self-succession plan of their candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari”
The minister said that going by PDP statement that the abduction and release of the Dapchi girls were stage-managed, it showed “that the party and its co-travelers do not understand that terrorism is a global problem”.
“Perhaps we should ask the PDP what indeed the party knows about the abduction of the Dapchi girls, going by its statement that their abduction and release were stage-managed.”
“The party made itself a laughing stock within and outside Nigeria with that statement.”
“Don’t they know that our international friends are involved in the process that led to the release of the girls?” he said.
Mohammed recalled the warning of President Muhammadu Buhari “against those elements who have chosen to make political fortune of our citizens’ misfortune”.
“Government would not tolerate any attempt by any person or group to trivialize or politicize security issues for politically motivated ends.”
“Accordingly, security agencies would not hesitate to decisively deal with such unscrupulous characters. Those are very clear words that need no elaboration.
It would be recalled that the PDP had taken a swipe at the Presidency alleging that both the abduction and the release of the girls were stage-managed for political purposes.
The National Chairman and the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Prince Uche Secondus and Mr Kola Ologbondiyan – had at different news conferences demanded the probe, arrest and prosecution of all those involved in the alleged saga.
Below is a copy of the party’s reaction to Lai Mohammed’s comments.
