The Lagos State Coordinator of the Buhari/Osinbajo campaign Organisation, Abiodun Faleke, has warned Nigerians against being tricked into another round of slavery by the last-minute move by President Goodluck Jonathan to curry their favour.
He said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has in the past 16 years, demonstrated that it was bereft of ideas on how to take the country to the Promised Land.
Sounding the note of warning at the Ikeja campaign office of the organisation, Faleke, who is seeking re-election into the House of Representatives from Ikeja Federal Constituency, urged the electorate to critically weigh the promises being made the President, especially, few days to the elections.
Faleke noted that it will amount to expecting too much from a President, whose party has not been able to tackle Nigeria’s socio-economic problems for 16 years.
He said: “The PDP has been controlling the Federal Government since 1999. The party has been applying the same solution to the problems and it has been getting the same results. In fact, the PDP pills have been worse than the ailments they are meant to treat.
“It is obvious that the party has lost its compass and therefore, the promises being made by Mr. President cannot help the PDP. Besides, the promises are utopian.”
According to him, the President has been deceiving Nigerians with promises to implement the recommendation of the 2014 National Conference and to create additional states.
“It will amount to impunity for the Presidency to implement such policies without the consideration and passage by the states and federal lawmakers,” he said.
Faleke wondered how a democratically elected president can implement the recommendations of a report that has not been forwarded to the National Assembly for consideration.
His words: “What the President is promising can only be possible under a military administration when the legislative arm is missing. Then the Head of State acts as the sole administrator.
“Nigerians should not forget that we are no longer in the military era. We must not also forget that Senators and House of Representatives members had just concluded a Constitutional Review before Mr. President, in his wisdom, decided to constitute the National Conference.
“Constitutionally, the lawmakers represent the interests of Nigerians from their constituents. Mr. President nominated more than 80 per cent of the Confab members and only those who will do the biddings of the government got the nominations.
“That is why today, those who got Mr. President’s patronage as Confab members are the only people endorsing his re-election just to justify the jumbo remunerations they got from the Confab.”
Faleke advised Nigerians to vote for Change to save the country from total collapse, saying that the All Progressives Congress (APC) is on a rescue mission to restore the pride of Nigeria in every sphere of the human endeavour.
2015 Elections
The Nigerian general election of 2015 will be the 5th quadrennial election to be held since the end of military rule in 1999. Voters will elect the President and Members to the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan will be seeking a second and final term. It was first scheduled to be held on 14 February 2015, then postponed by six weeks to 28 March 2015.
On February 8, 2015, the Independent National Electoral Commission announced that “presidential and national assembly elections will now hold on March 28 while the governorship and state assemblies election will take place on April 11,” due to security concerns related to the Boko Haram insurgency.
The postponement gives GEJ/PDP six extra weeks to rally support and undermine Muhammadu Buhari/APC. However, the postponement will also intensify the already bitter tension between not only the two political parties but also between the north (largely Muslim and pro-Buhari) and the south (largely Christian and pro-Jonathan), potentially leading to more violence.
The postponement also raises questions about the military’s political neutrality.
