"PDP trying to divert attention from its failures" - Atiku

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, on Sunday, said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was trying to divert attention from its failures, by striving to link the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) with terrorism.

Atiku, in a statement he personally signed and made available to the media, said the PDP had, in the past, labeled the APC as “Islamic Brotherhood Party of Nigeria” and the “Janjaweed Party,” adding that the nomenclatures did not exist in the Nigerian circumstance.

He also warned the Federal Government to refrain from polarising the country along fault lines, adding that such measures were only meant to divert attention from what he called “ineptitude and apathetic posture to corruption and insecurity.”

Atiku, who was reacting to the report credited to a former Russian spy, which linked APC to terrorism and Boko Haram, said the allegations were sponsored by the PDP-led administration.

According to him, the latest publication from the Russian was a continuation of the PDP’s campaign of calumny against the opposition party and its leaders.

He insisted that the ploy was aimed at diverting attention from the failures of the ruling party, adding that it was worrisome that the strategy of the PDP was to drive a wedge between the people and the party, by using a religious divide-and-rule strategy to get re-election in 2015.

“The APC is a party for all Nigerians, irrespective of their religious, ethnic or regional identities. Let no one get confused,” he said.

Atiku said the travails of the nation affected ordinary Nigerians, “regardless of religion, ethnicity or section of the country they come from.”