The All Progressives Congress, APC, has
insisted that the Jonathan Administration is
not cooperating with the party’s Transition
Committee, while describing the Peoples
Democratic Party’s spokesperson, Olisah
Metuh, as a man with an incurable disdain
for the truth.
”We say, with all sense of responsibility,
that as of today, May 14th 2015, just about
two weeks to the May 29th handover date,
no shred of information as to the status of
governance from any Ministry, Department
or Agency of government has been given
to our Transition Committee,” the party said
in a statement issued in Abuja on Thursday
by its National Publicity Secretary, Lai
Mohammed.
”If that qualifies, in Metuh’s lexicon, as
cooperation, then there is a problem
somewhere. We dare Metuh or anyone for
that matter, to controvert the fact that not a
line of handover note has been handed over
to our Transition Committee. Until then,
Metuh has egg on his face,” it said.
APC restated its earlier advice to Mr. Metuh
to urgently undertake a crash course in
how to be an opposition party
spokesperson so he won’t talk or write
himself into avoidable trouble in the days
ahead.
The party admonished the PDP
spokesperson to always cross-check the
information available to him in order to
separate rumours from facts, saying had he
done that, he would not have issued the
statement in which he tried to cast
aspersion on the APC by accusing it of
”fabricating lies” over the issue of the
Jonathan Administration’s non-cooperation
with the APC’s Transition Committee.
”Metuh decided to put his foot in his mouth
when he latched on to the statement made
by our Transition Committee Chairman,
forgetting that in making his statement, the
Chairman was only acting the statesman
that he is by not saying anything that will
put the federal government
in bad light.
”A discerning party spokesman, rather than
a rabble-rousing one, would have
understood the elder statesman’s stand for
what it is instead of using it as a peg to
issue a needless, hollow statement that puts
his party and government in bad light. We
had decided to allow sleeping dogs to lie,
but now that Metuh has stirred the hornet’s
nest, it is time to put out the facts for
Nigerians to judge.
”What happened was that, following the
request by our Transition Committee to
meet with them, they invited us to what
was the first formal meeting between both
Transition Committees. But the meeting
was a mere photo-op, as it yielded nothing
concrete as far as handover notes are
concerned.
”In fact, what we met at the so-called
meeting was far worse than what we had
thought. Whereas we had hoped to get
their handover notes on May 14th (the date
they had indicated to us informally), they
told us point blank that the notes won’t be
ready until May 24th. Because this date falls
on a Sunday, that means we won’t be
getting the handover notes until May 25th,
just four days before the May 29th
handover date ”How do they honestly
expect us to peruse thousands of pages of
handover notes, ask pertinent questions
and seek necessary clarifications within four
days? Because we want a smooth
transition,
we asked if we could meet with some of
the ministers pending the release of the
handover notes, but they said no. When
one of their members even suggested that
the whole process be fast-tracked, they did
not budge.
”Despite this set back, we decided not to put
the whole issue in the public domain, until
the babbling Metuh decided to look for
trouble, describing the deliberate
stonewalling by the Jonathan Administration
as cooperation,” it said.
APC assured Nigerians that whether or not
the Jonathan Administration cooperates
with it during the transition, the party will
live up to expectation by providing
purposeful governance.
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