The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has described the tagging of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) as a Muslim party as “the persistent campaign of calumny against the APC, with an effort at using ethno-religious sentiments to destroy the budding party.”
In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party however thanked Nigerians for rejecting the attempt, going by their reactions on social media, making the campaign being waged by those hell-bent on perpetuating mediocre leadership in Nigeria t fall flat.
‘’These purveyors of falsehood do not want good governance. That’s why they are peddling the lies that the interim leadership of the APC is controlled by Muslims, and that it did not reflect the country’s plural values.
‘’The truth is that while ethno-religious sentiments did not form the criteria used in selecting the interim leadership, we were conscious that Nigeria is a country of plural values. That is why we have 17 Christians and 18 Muslims (the best balance possible in the odd number of 35 posts that were shared). That is why the 35 occupiers of the positions are from 29 different states, four more than the 25 stipulated by INEC. It was equal opportunity across all zones!’’ it said.
ACN challenged anyone who doubts the authenticity of the facts and figures quoted above to verify them at INEC, instead of taking to the social media to spread rumours.
The party described the latest attempt to abort the APC baby as the last-ditch effort by those who have mounted similar campaigns against the party in the past, to no avail.
‘’First, they ambushed us by duplicating our acronym, sponsored of course by those who are well known to Nigerians, and, when that failed to slow down our momentum, they said the sharing of posts will divide us and ultimately sound our death knell. With these moves having failed woefully, they have now played what they considered their most potent joker: the ethno-religious card.
“Thankfully, this too has failed. Nigerians are so desirous of good governance that they will not allow any play on sentiments to shake their resolve,’’ it said.
ACN said the promoters of the APC are so determined to give Nigeria the good leadership that has eluded the country for so long that they have decided to shelve their differences and make whatever sacrifices that are necessary to achieve their objective.
The party appealed to all Nigerians who want an end to the rapacious and incompetent leadership currently plaguing their country to continue to disregard the attempts by enemies of progress to sabotage the birth of the APC, in addition to being vigilant in the days ahead, saying: ‘’After all, it is said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’’
Meanwhile, a former minister of aviation and chieftain of the APC, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, has described those describing the party as harbouring religious agenda as mischief makers.
Reacting to speculation in the social media space to the composition of the interim national leadership of the yet-to-be-registered party, Fani-Kayode in a post on his facebook account page urges those making the allegations to look for the list before drawing such conclusions.
“Those that say that APC is a Muslim party and that are citing and passing around a long list of newly-appointed Muslim interim officers as evidence of this are either being mischevous or are just plain ignorant,” he writes on his wall.
To the minister, “This is merely a PDP ploy to sell a lie to the public and attempt to clothe it as truth and it shall not stand. The truth is that there are many more religious and ethnic bigots in the PDP and much more ignorance than there is in any other party in Nigeria.”
According to him, there are more religious bigots in the PDP than in the APC, adding that the national chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, had in the past described Boko Haram as ‘’freedom fighters’’.
“It is the leader of the PDP by the name of President Goodluck Jonathan and not any APC leader that recently described Boko Haram as his ‘siblings’ whom he ‘could not move against’. It is a leader of the PDP in the person of Governor Isa Yuguda who recently said that he knew the various factions in Boko Haram very well and that he knew what they could do and not do.”