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Presidency to PDP: Apology not enough, return your loot
News & Trends •
we challenge individual pdp leaders to publicly and voluntarily tell nigerians how much they stole and then agree to cough up their illegal acquisitions of wealth if they want their apology to be taken seriously1 the nigerian presidency has advised nigerians to be cautious of the less-than-honest apology offered by the peoples democratic party pdp national chairman mr. uche secondus1 in a statement malam garba shehu senior special assistant to president muhammadu buhari said pdps apology should be seen in the context of a former ruling party which is desperate to recapture power because it no longer has unhindered access to national resources for private uses1 the pdp has not even acknowledged the fact that it plundered the national economy and for a party that dismissed the anti-corruption war as a political witch hunt it is impossible to believe that its public apology comes from the bottom of the heart1 shehudescribed as apt an earlier statement by the minister of information alhaji lai mohammed that there are heavy moral duties that go with apologies if the culprits want to be taken seriously1 even desperate thieves apologise because they are caught and not because they are incapable of repeating the crime if they had another opportunity1 we believe that the pdp should not only apologise for the imposition of candidates and the culture of impunity but must also come clean and acknowledge that they participated in large scale corruption and massive diversions of public funds to private pockets while poverty was ravaging the ordinary nigerians1 it rebuffed the opposition partys apology and instead asked it and its members to return the money stolen from the public till during the partys 16 years in the saddle1 apology borne by desperation to recapture power without a desire to admit how much they stole and the reluctance to return the loot is morally hollow. this goes beyond rebranding. nigerians are not interested in brands. they want their money back1 for such apology to gain acceptance the offenders must first of all show remorse then return that which was unlawfully taken or restore the damage caused the nation and commit to never doing the wrong they did again. the pdp has done none of these for them to be taken seriously by anyone1 instead of addressing this cogent issue raised by the minister the pdp veered off to accuse this administration of borrowing money but failed in that regard to admit that they borrowed to steal while buhari administration is borrowing to set up long-delayed infrastructure1 they accused the president of unevenness of inflaming ethnic and religious tensions when it is on record that they gave this country its divisive president who chose the hallowed premises of places of worship to read important national statements1 president buhari never fails in his duty as the chief security officer of the nation. he acts fast whenever and wherever there are incidents by ordering law-enforcement agencies to do their job and fact-finding mission to give him actionable reports1 pdps uncaring attitude to these matters including the kidnapping of 270 girls from chibok is the hallmark of the long years of misrule1 another issue of moral and political significance is about the recent disclosure by us investigators that the pdp government engaged in massive data theft that included the hacking of candidate muhammadu buharis personal data before the last general elections. pdps continued silence on this reprehensible heist only goes to confirm their remorselessness even as more and more facts are emerging that the same unfair method was the modus operandi that they used to capture political power in the 20171