A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Osita Okechukwu, has told the Peoples Democratic Party to be thankful to God that its 16-year rule in the country was not probed by the succeeding APC.

Mr Okechukwu stated this on Tuesday in Abuja, while reacting to a statement by PDP congratulating Ghanaians for the conduct of free, fair and transparent general elections.

The PDP had, in a statement, said that the verdict of the people of Ghana in the presidential election was a signal to the APC that its days were numbered.

The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, had said in the statement that the power of the people in Nigeria, like in Ghana, would ‘surely prevail and end the APC’s oppressive rule.’

This, he said, would “return Nigeria to the path of good governance, security, political stability and economic prosperity on the platform of the PDP in 2027.”

However, in his reactions to Mr Ologunagba’s statement, Mr Okechukwu said that the PDP should thank God that former President Muhammadu Buhari and President Bola Tinubu, out of sheer statesmanship, refused to probe ‘the 16 locust years of the PDP administrations.’

Mr Okechukwu, a former Director-General of Voice of Nigeria, described the 16 years of PDP administrations as ones full of squandering and lack of planning.

He said that Nigeria had yet to recover from the humongous culture of impunity and trust deficit planted by the PDP on the Nigerian soil.

Mr Okechukwu said that corruption was among the cultures of impunity, saying it governed the privatisation of Nigeria’s electricity value chain, a key element in the country’s industrialisation drive.

He said, “Another is the blatant rigging of the 2007 general elections, of which the foremost beneficiary, President Umaru Yar’Adua, out of good conscience and noble magnanimity, publicly acknowledged the malfeasance that characterised his victory.’’

Mr Okechukwu also mentioned what he called the conscienceless sale of the legislative and ministerial quarters, the annual rent of which, he said, was bleeding the country’s treasury.

“Another one is the neglect of $23 billion in Greenfield Refinery, which could have saved over $70 billion expended on importation of refined petroleum products and which simulated the economic hardship of today,” he said.

On why, for nine years, the APC administration could not fix those challenges, he recalled the efforts made by the Buhari administration to reopen talks on the Greenfield Refinery, which, according to him, the Chinese regrettably rebuffed.

The former VON director-general said that Nigerians were not in a hurry to forget the deliberate breach of the rotational convention of the president from the north to the south.

He said that the country could not also forget the utter disregard for Section 7 of the PDP’s constitution, which expressly mandated zoning.

Mr Okechukwu advised the PDP not to insult the sensibilities of Nigerians by assuming that citizens would easily forget how they were put in harm’s way.

He said that PDP should thank God that Mr Buhari and Mr Tinubu did not want to probe them, adding, “That’s why Nigerians cannot decipher the difference between the two political parties.”

(NAN)