The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday said President Muhammadu Buhari should withdraw his unnecessary remark in his new year message about “standing down” in 2023, because he and his party, the All Progressives
Congress (APC), would have no other option than to exit office at the end of his tenure.
PDP made the remark stressing that Buhari’s new year message was completely uninspiring, tasteless, repetitive, vacuous and does not galvanize any form of hope for a despairing nation.
In a statement by its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP charged Buhari to be courageous enough and issue a fresh new year message to “show remorse for the corruption, incompetence and misrule of his administration as well as admonish his disintegrating APC against its crass insincerity, violence and divisive machinations that have brought so much pain, anguish and despondency to our nation.”
The statement reads: “Indeed, President Buhari should stop presenting a picture as if he has the option to continue in office beyond 2023.
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“We hold in total submission to the letter and spirit of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), that it is not an issue of “standing down” or not being “available” for future election, but a decided and inevitable position as contained in our constitution that he must quit office after two terms which will end in 2023.
“Mr. President, therefore, does not have any other choice before the law.
“Whether President Buhari likes it or not, he and his APC will exit the arena at the end of this tenure. History is replete with lessons from those who sought to stretch our nation beyond her limits.
“Moreover, President Buhari and his extinguishing APC ought to have known by now that Nigerians have moved ahead and cannot wait to see them go.”
The opposition party insisted that Nigerians are no longer swayed by empty promises and false performance indices as replete in the President’s new year message.
PDP said: “Our party restates that President Buhari should therefore end this showboating by issuing a fresh new year message to demonstrate a commitment to electoral reforms by returning the 8th Assembly Electoral
Act amendment bill, which he refused to sign, to the National Assembly without any further delay.
“He should also be prepared to waste no time in signing the bill into law when retooled to meet current exigencies and passed by the current National Assembly.
“President Buhari should also order the immediate prosecution of his party leaders who perpetrated violence in the 2019 general election as well as the governorship elections in Ekiti, Osun, Bayelsa and Kogi States where APC used thugs and compromised security agents to unleash mayhem and killed innocent compatriots who came out to perform their civic responsibility at the polls.”
