The All Progressives Congress, APC, Nigeria’s biggest opposition party, has urged the National Assembly to rise beyond partisanship and save Nigeria from imminent collapse by immediately kick-starting the process of impeaching President Goodluck Jonathan for gross misconduct.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, the party said it was issuing the call with a high sense of responsibility and the strong belief that the impeachment of the president is a legitimate constitutional option available to the National Assembly not only to protect the nation’s democracy but also to ensure the country’s unity.
”Our country is drifting dangerously and our people are divided now perhaps more than at any other point in our history, with the exception of the civil war period. There is a total failure of leadership, even as insecurity, unprecedented corruption, palpable impunity, massive unemployment and hunger stalk the land,” the party said.
The opposition party said the real essence of government is the security and welfare of the citizenry, explaining that the Nigerian government, under Mr. Jonathan has failed to live up to the justification of its existence.
“There can be no other definition of gross misconduct than that,” it said.
The APC warned that if the National Assembly failed to act very fast, it would share with the ‘clueless and feckless’ Jonathan administration the eternal blame for bringing to naught the hard work of the nation’s heroes past and for crashing and dashing the hopes of millions of Nigerians, especially the youth who are the leaders of tomorrow.
The party said it is necessary for anyone who might say the call for the impeachment of president Jonathan is outlandish to remember that all it takes to ruin the country’s democracy is for “this increasingly-paranoid government to get a pliant judge to put a judicial stamp on just one of its litany of illegalities, thus setting the country ablaze.”
The statement adds that ”there are many such judges as we can see by some recent events, despite our warnings that the efforts of the current CJN to clean up the judiciary must not be sabotaged by a few pliant judges.”
”One such scenario is the present challenge in court by the PDP of the defection to the APC of five state governors. The PDP has gone to court fully aware of the ruling of the Supreme Court after the party-PDP- attempted to make then Vice President Atiku Abubakar to lose his seat and to also strip him of his privileges following his defection to the ACN.”
The party warned of “widespread repercussions” if the PDP goes ahead with its move.
“The APC has resolved that henceforth, every act of impunity of the PDP and the presidency will be met with stiff resistance in the form of a vociferous telegraphing of people power, the likes of which have not been witnessed in these parts,” the party said in a rare sternly-worded statement.
”We reiterate those words today, and make bold to say that not even the revelation by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, that snipers are being trained secretly and that 1,000 people have been placed on political watch, will deter us from saving this democracy, which was watered by the sweat and blood of many patriots, long before this generation of opportunists stormed the political scene,” it said.
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