BY CHAMBERLAIN ODEY, JOS – Plateau State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has scored the Governor Simon Lalong-led All Progressives Congress (APC) government in the state miserably below average as the administration marks two years in office on May 29.
In a press conference in Jos, the Chairman of the Plateau state chapter of the PDP, Damishi Sango, gave kudos to the party, whose efforts, he said, rescued Nigeria from continuous military and repositioned it from being a pariah state, by restoring hope and dignity among Nigerians, leading to the enthronement of May Day celebration every year.
Sango regretted, however, that two years of the APC government in the state have reversed all these gains, saying “it is unfortunate that as I speak today, we no longer boast of any of these beautiful democratic developments of the past”.
Although Governor Lalong in his Democracy Day speech that “in the past two years and continuing on our renewed platform of appropriate re-balancing and provision of practical governance, we have made tremendous progress”, the PDP disagreed as Sango observed that “two years of the Lalong government has nothing comparatively close to the achievements of the PDP government. So bad is it that they cannot even celebrate fifty years of the existence of the state. Instead, commercial prayers season are organised”.
Continuing the damnation of Lalong’s two years in office, Sango said it is rather misbegotten that “funds are being wasted on celebrating carnivals in a state where basic functions of state cannot be provided. Like the agama lizard, the government claps for itself and sees the carnivals as an achievement!”, as he also noted that “we have also followed developments in other states where the golden jubilee celebrations are used to commission special projects”, lamenting that “the Plateau state government, to the contrary, has nothing to commission”.
“The most shameful act of the Lalong ‘rescue’ administration is the illegal dissolution of the democratically elected local government councils in the state. This exercise however did not surprise us given the general lack of respect of the APC nationwide has shown to the tenets of democracy”, the PDP noted.
Continuing, the PDP said Lalong and his APC have “murdered democracy by the dissolution of the elected local government councils”, wondering, as “the councils now are being run un-democratically”, how “the APC can substitute democracy with impunity and ask the people to celebrate democracy on a day like this?”
According to the PDP, “since the APC received the mantle of leadership, both at the federal level and in Plateau state, the nation and this state have been the worse for it. The whole nation is groaning. There is unparalleled distress across the land. Suffering, death, threats of secession, mismanagement of camps of internally displaced persons, absence of economic plans, unbridled and barefaced nepotism, executive lawlessness, haunting of political opponents, and the needless rush to shame the judiciary have all become familiar marks of the APC government”.
The PDP surmised that “the economic and social status of the ordinary Nigerian have taken a tragic nosedive. And with shameless lies at every occasion, the APC has proven to be the Nigerian Nightmare and the greatest political deception in modern nationhood”.
