PDP holds discourse on politics, governance in Nigeria
• Alleges persecution of Ekweremadu by APC
THE National Working Committee (NWC) of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has announced plans to host a public discourse on contemporary politics and good governance in Nigeria In a statement issued by the party, the discourse, themed, ‘Nation Building: Resetting the Agenda’, holds on Monday, March 26, 2018 by 11:00am at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja.
The event targeted at the youth, women and special groups will have in attendance the national executive council members, state chairmen, governors, House of Representative members, Senators and other members of the party.
The discourse will also be attended by thought leaders in political economy and other erudite personalities irrespective of party affiliations and will feature a keynote presentation and a panel session to address topical issues relating to sociopolitical economy of the nation; seeking to provide alternative solutions to the perennial issues of insecurity, peace, national unity, the 2019 elections, and how to make Nigeria work again.
The public discourse is part of efforts of the present leadership of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to ensure Nigerian the youth and women are actively engaged in fashioning a new sociopolitical order with capacity to rescue the country from the brink and move the nation to the threshold of progress at national and sub-national lev- els in 2019.
Meanwhile, the PDP has urged the Federal Government to fight corruption and stop hounding members of opposition parties.
The party frowned at the motion exparte filed by the Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property seeking the forfeiture of assets allegedly not declared by the Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, alleging plots to silence the opposition.
In a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbodiyan, yesterday, the party said that while the PDP was in full support of any genuine anti-graft war, the All Progressives Congress (APC)- led administration’s “obsession with Ekweremadu, was another clear indication that it was not ready to fight corruption, but rather out to scandalise, persecute, and bring down its perceived opponents.”
It said: “The PDP recalls that this government rushed to arraign Ekweremadu and the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, in 2016 on trumped up charges of forgery of Senate Standing Rule, even when there was not even a mention of their names in the contentious police report or proof of evidence. It eventually withdrew the charges for lack of merit.
“The police raided and ransacked Ekweremadu’s official guest house in Abuja in May 2017 and blamed it on false whistleblowers, whom they charged to court. Nothing has been heard about the trial of the alleged false whistleblowers again.”
According to the party, “in the current matter, apart from relying on an obsolete law to dabble into the roles of the Code of Conduct Bureau, we are not surprised that the panel could not carry out a thorough and independent investigation on the purported property of the senator, but relied on a petition by the former Chief Judge of Enugu State, Justice Innocent Umezulike, who is standing corruption trial in several courts, after his removal from office by the National Judicial Council (NJC) in 2017.”
PDP said it was also instructive that “this calculated smear campaign in the guise of forfeiture of phantom assets came on the heels of Ekweremadu’s alarm and scathing criticism of the APCled administration over the nation’s deteriorating democracy and in the midst of the ongoing executive-legislature faceoff, in which a ranking senator of the APC extraction identified Ekweremadu as a pillar of support to the Senate president”.
The PDP said that contrary to the Federal Government’s claims, Ekweremadu had assured it that he declared his assets.
It wondered why the Federal Government rushed to court without completion of investigation, but had turned deaf ears to the outcry by Nigerians for the prosecution of the administration’s functionaries and friends indicted of corruption.