PDP Accuses APC Of Plotting To Use Fake Soldiers

• Insists On Use Of Soldiers To Safeguard 2015 Polls

• Musa Warns Against Further shift

THE leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Saturday alerted the nation of alleged secret recruitment of thugs and importation of fake military uniform by the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the March and April polls. This came as former civilian governor of Kaduna State and opposition leader, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, Saturday warned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of any further postponement of the 2015 polls. 

  Briefing journalists in Abuja, Deputy National Chairman of the PDP, Uche Secondus, said that the APC had also embarked on propaganda mission that could discredit the outcome of the election and cause serious problem for Nigeria’s democracy, even after the election.

   Secondus stated: “Nigerians need to be informed that the APC is not campaigning to win the elections. What they are doing, instead, is to mobilise public opinion in readiness for an orchestrated strategy to discredit the result of the 2015 polls. They commenced this line of action with contrived opinion polls result they bombarded the international and domestic media with, even before the beginning of the campaigns, claiming that the APC will defeat the PDP with wide margin.

   “Apart from negative propaganda, there are disturbing reports of the APC actually organising to disrupt the polls. They are recruiting thugs and importing service uniforms for their use”

   “We alert Nigerians of the seriousness of these plots. While the PDP is making effort to sell its manifesto to Nigerians, the APC is busy perfecting schemes that would derail our democracy if they fail do win,” he added.   Secondus further disclosed that part of the strategy of the opposition include “trying to cause disaffection within the security services, inciting one religion against the other as well as inciting the international community against Nigeria.

     On APC’s opposition to use of soldiers during the general elections, Secondus said: ‘’It is not new; it has been done before, soldiers aren’t involved in elections, but they are kept in strategic places to safeguard the election. Whoever that is afraid of the security provided by the army or the police and want to have their own private army to conduct the election, is the one that wants to throw this country into crisis. Don’t forget that the United States has predicted that there would be no country in 2015. God forbid.

   “The PDP supports the government to make sure that Nigerians are secured. Remember what happened in the first republic, ‘’wild, wild west.’’ No one is ready for that. 

   Secondus lamented what he described as a situation of total loss of governance in his home State, Rivers, due to concentration of attention on 2015 politics.

 Meanwhile, expressing concern that there could be a wave of social and political revolution in Nigeria if INEC shifts the general elections for the second time, former civilian governor of Kaduna State and opposition leader, Musa, warned against such move.

    INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, had shifted the 2015 general election from February 14 and 28 to March 28 and April 11, citing the bloody Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast as one of the reasons.  But, speaking with Journalists shortly after a meeting of the national executive committee of the deregistered Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) yesterday, Alhaji Musa, who is the national chairman of the party said election could hold with or without the crisis that is taking place in a small portion of the country’s territory.

    Musa warned that those in authorities should not take Nigerians for a ride, saying that “no Nigerian is a slave and that the country does not belong to a small group of Nigerians.”