Guard your utterances, PDP tells Kwankwaso

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The Peoples Democratic Party has cautioned former Kano State Governor, Sen. Rabiu Kwankwaso, against “incendiary utterances,” which it said were capable of destabilising the National Assembly and rubbishing the prevailing political tranquility in the country.

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, said the party was particularly shocked by what he described as the hate statement from Kwankwaso wherein he used offensive language on the PDP and its members in the National Assembly.

The former governor had criticised the election of Sen. Ike Ekweremadu as the deputy Senate President, when his party, the PDP, is a minority in the Senate.

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He said the election was wrong and that it would not help the cause of the former ruling party.

The PDP and its members in the National Assembly backed aggrieved members of the ruling All Progressives Congress to elect the leadership of the assembly.

While condemning this, Kwankwaso warned that the action was capable of affecting the regime of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Metuh, in his statement, however said that his party was “taken aback by the venom and bitterness in the statement, especially coming from a former governor, an elected senator, a highly respected former member of the PDP, who also benefitted hugely from the party as minister and two-time state governor.”

He said the PDP would have wished not to join issues with politicians who grew their political profile in the party no matter where they are at the moment, but regretted that “Senator Kwankwaso went too far in declaring the party dead just because he is aggrieved that the Senate Presidency did not go his way.”

He said it was “indecorous, mischievous and misleading for anybody to declare a party with an enviable history as the PDP, with 14 state governors, 47 Senators and hundreds of members in the House of Representatives and State Houses of Assembly dead.

“Where was Senator Kwankwaso when a party he claimed was dead defeated his choice candidate in the Senate? Was it a dead party that was able to do what, according to Kwankwaso, no other party could do in the 16 years of PDP control of the National Assembly?

“Indeed, we found it very baffling that such unguarded statement came from a person who contested for the high office of the president of Nigeria.”

He added that statements from such personalities should be decorous, statesman-like and focused on the national interest instead of promoting acrimony and division in the polity.

“This unfortunate outburst is well below Senator Kwankwaso’s character and status and we urge him to desist from such,” Metuh added.

He said that Kwankwaso and other APC leaders should rather be grateful to PDP senators for being disciplined and not using their preponderance at the inauguration to take the entire leadership of the Senate following the opening created by the APC leaders in convening a meeting of senators-elect at the same time fixed for the election of the leaders of the National Assembly.

He also dismissed the claim by Kwankwaso as frivolous, unfounded and unsubstantiated that PDP’s agenda was to irritate President Buhari and put a hurdle before him.

Metuh recalled that the PDP had repeatedly assured that it would help the government by providing robust and constructive opposition that would help his government, adding that such baseless complains would not stop Nigerians from holding the APC-led federal government responsible on its campaign promises.

The spokesperson for the opposition party also described as laughable, Kwankwaso’s claims that under President Buhari, everything is working well in the country.

He said such credit for the stability in the nation must be given to the immediate past President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, whose conceding of power, even amidst electoral irregularities, he added, brought the conducive atmosphere the nation is enjoying today.