Rivers crisis: PDP overheating Nigeria’s polity, putting country in harm’s way – Okechukwu

A founding member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Osita Okechukwu, on Sunday said the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is responsible for overheating Nigeria's polity and putting the country in harm's way.

Okechukwu said the PDP was responsible for the political rumblings, the Rivers State imbroglio, and the attempt of dangerous slide into one party state.

In a statement he signed, the former Voice of Nigeria, VON, Director General, said it was high time the PDP came down from their high horse and apologised profusely to Nigerians for unintended consequences of their impunity..

Okechukwu noted that we should beware of retrograde amnesia; as we cannot easily forget how the PDP leadership in 2023 presidential primary sowed the seeds of discord and stoked the raging inferno by violently breaching the rotation convention of north to south and vice versa.

He added that the day we tame the culture of impunity, the day we progress, therefore if PDP had considered our fledgling democracy or even obeyed Section 7 of their constitution, there couldn’t have been Wike Masquerade.

On whether APC is capitalising on the discord in the PDP to drive Nigerians into one party state, Okechukwu said that it is those elements who jettisoned with wave of hand the rotation convention, the ligament holding the north and the south together, that are the drivers of one party state.

He said: “Otherwise Nigeria operates multiparty system by law, it is only the fire stoked by PDP, that is raging. They erroneously misunderstood the sophisticated northern electorates, assumed they were in dormitory to be hauled to polling stations on election day to vote for northern candidate.

“These are illiberal elements fast eroding our multiparty system. They’re at it again to stop rotation convention with an awkward presidency arithmetic of 17 years south and 11 years north by 2027, as if Nigeria got independence in 1999.

“Finally Okechukwu submitted that if PDP had adhered to rule of law and subsisting rotation convention, maybe Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso votes could have been theirs in 2023 presidential election.”