Former spokesperson for the Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organisation and national chairmanship hopeful of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Segun Showunmi, has said the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, and its candidate during the last presidential election, President Bola Tinubu, are confused after rigging their way to power.
He said the President’s confusion is the reason for the country’s current hardship.
He spoke at the sidelines of the end-of-the-year party organised by the party in Ogun State on Saturday.
“The APC have manipulated, and they are now confused. Everything is not working. Life is now really unbearable. The cost of living is too high. Inflation is too high. People are just generally feeling unhappy; they can’t manage exchange rates. They can’t manage the naira. Every day, we hear stories of people getting killed, and they have not been able to do anything.
“They have compacted themselves in a party of poverty, a party where they only go for condolences, a focus-less and directionless group,” he said.
The candidate of the PDP in the last election, Ladi Adebutu, was accused of fleeing the country over allegations of vote buying during the 18th March gubernatorial election.
But on his return, he presented himself at the police headquarters in the state, gave his statement and left.
Showunmi, however, accused the APC of attempting to intimidate the PDP, insisting that his party cannot be cowed.
“It is difficult for opponents in Nigeria, and the ones that are in charge of the country now will go to any length or spare no expense to make life harder for the opponents. So what we have come here to do today is in solidarity with our party and the flag bearer during the last election in Ogun state, to say that nothing about the rumours going around is true. Thank God he has also presented himself before the police and all that is now in the past.
“But, suffice to say that democracy can not thrive under an atmosphere of bullying, within 16 years that the PDP was in charge of this country, I don’t remember us bullying the opposition and they had better stop bullying the opposition. We are not the kind of people that can be bullied or cawed,” he added.
Also speaking of his ambition to contest the position of the national chairmanship of the PDP, Atiku’s ex-spokesman noted that there is a need for a paradigm shift in the party.
“A political party that is 25 years old must review itself in a way that it can recalibrate, right its wrongs and bring together a set of new opinions that will make it different from all other parties and also run in an equitable, just and all-inclusive manner. People are not saying they just want a chairman, but they are saying they want Otunba Segun Showunmi. I will try my best and if it is the wish of the leaders and collegians, we shall run an insightful tenure, a paradigm shift from what we used to have.
“Every other zone has done Chairman and it is even beyond that now. It is about who has passion, capability, tenacity, wisdom and Competence to know how to administer the party in the right direction,” he said.
