The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has condemned what it observed as the resort by leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to “political banditry of harassing and threatening Nigerians,”particularly civil servants in Kano State to register as members of the party against their will.”
Making this assertion in a statement by Kola Ologbondiyan, National Publicity Secretary, on Sunday, the party opined that the action further exposes the level of public rejection “that is now confronting the party.”
The PDP described such act as “political terrorism, symptomatic of a dying party gasping for breathe, adding that Nigerians have rejected the APC and will never be intimidated by such threats.”
The statement added: “One can only pity APC leaders over the crushing public apathy against their fraudulent membership registration exercise, for which their Kano State Chairman, Abdulahi Abbas, out of frustration, threatened civil servants and other innocent Nigerians in the state, to join their dying party or lose all benefits and opportunities from the state government.
“It is appalling that after being exposed in their scheme of hiding under their duplicitous membership revalidation and re-registration exercise to inflate their membership register with fictitious figures, the APC leaders are now shamelessly resorting to harassing innocent civil servants and their families to register in the party, against their will.
“The fact that the APC has been reduced to a situation where it is rather forcing and coercing Nigerians in their supposed strongholds of Kano, Kaduna and Katsina state, who ordinarily should be trooping out en masse to register, only goes to show that the APC is already dead in their consciousness, having betrayed them in the last six years.
“Nigerians should therefore disregard any membership figures that are eventually released by the APC as that would only be a product of inflated numbers made up of fictitious names and forced registration.
“More importantly, our party condemns the threat issued by the APC as completely unconstitutional, subversive and a criminal act of political banditry.
“The APC leaders also need be made aware that such threats constitute a provocative assault on the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the citizens and this is capable of triggering a serious social unrest with the propensity of derailing our nation’s democracy.”
The PDP called on the national leadership of the APC to call the Kano chapter to order “as Nigerians are not ready to stomach the littlest of victimisation against any citizens over their manifest refusal to register as members of APC.”
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