The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media Affairs, Tunde Rahman, has urged opposition parties to get their acts together and behave like the opposition.
This was as he slammed politicians of the “sinking” Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who are “crying foul, alleging there is a drift towards one-partism.”
In a statement on Friday, Rahman said the cry from the opposition is because some governors and top party chieftains are joining the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) train because of the sterling performance of President Bola Tinubu and the gradual economic bounce back.
The presidential aide then reminded the opposition of what Nigeria was like when the PDP was the ruling party for 16 years.
“If they have forgotten or have chosen to forget, we won’t forget. Let me remind them: after the election in 1999, at the birth of a new political dispensation, PDP garnered 21 governors, defunct APP got nine and AD six governors.
“But by 2003, the rampaging PDP machine had snatched a total of 28 governors, ANPP 7 governors, while the AD had been left to just one governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who survived Obasanjo’s onslaught on the South-west.
“2007 was the era of President Obasanjo do-or-die politics. PDP kept its 28 governors and even went more bizarre and deadly, conducting a sham election everyone dubbed the worst in our history such that even the winner of the 2007 presidential poll, late President Yar’Adua, admitted it was massively rigged.
“PDP swore it would rule for 60 years. However, like-minded politicians from the North and South of the country got together, formed an alliance that birthed APC, unseated PDP in 2015 and ended a 16-year disastrous PDP rule,” he said.
According to Rahman, nothing has changed since 1999 because alignment and realignment are all parts of politics.
“This does not mean our politics is imperiled. What needs to happen is the opposition needs to get their acts together and behave like opposition parties. Chikena!” he said.
The Guardian
