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The Leader of the Big-Tenth, a political consortium pushing for the election of Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, Prof Pat Utomi yesterday said considering the abysmal and woeful performance of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the party ought to be organizing rallies to apologise to Nigerians, rather than grandstanding and positioning itself for another electoral contest.
Utomi who gave a historical account of how APC’s manifesto was drafted in his Lagos home, bemoaned the shared dishonesty of APC stalwarts, who rather than adhere to the manifesto document, shamelessly jettisoned it without any form of remorse.
He explained that because of the degradation of governance by the APC and the major opposition, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) support for transactional politics, handing over the reigns of presidential power to any of the two political parties, will definitely be a disaster for Nigeria.
He said: “the Nigerian people have spoken, they have said they are tired of this old order; they will wait for us to release our manifesto then they will copy it, add some things and come out and shout this is our manifesto, but in their heads, they have no plans to implement them.
“They have all the monies they have taken from our treasury, they will use it to make flash of all of these things.I wrote the last one (manifesto) and I am saying to you that they didn’t implement the things we wrote. In fact at point they said who said we promised that, we didn’t promise it, it is some people who wrote it and called it our manifesto, we must hold people accountable.
“All those who failed us yesterday, we must indeed, I say to you, that if we have a sense of shame in this country, there should be many rallies about APC, but they should be rallies of apologies, sorry we failed you.
“Now they are saying for example, we will get rid of insecurity in six months, they’ve said it before, what kind of broken record is this? Is this an insult to the Nigerian people? You and I know better,” he added.
Prof Utomi further explained that the intention of the Big-Tenth in supporting Peter Obi and Labour Party is to rescue Nigeria from the transactional politics of APC and PDP, stressing that, “the fact that they are standing in the gap for a people either to die or to live, that bond, that passion knowing that this is about the future of our children is what holds it together.
“Not transactions of what position will you get because that is the traditional way, that is the way they do it in APC and PDP, what will you give me, what will you not give me, this is different, this is driven by the fact that if we don’t, our children die.”
On the long awaited manifesto of Peter Obi and the Labour Party, Utomi maintained the the Presidential Campaign Council of Peter Obi wants to be painstaking, but not rushing.
“And the fact that whenever we put out a document, those people will go and grab it and put one sentence there and we heard that the spokesperson for the PDP already said that the APC went and stole the Hope 93 document and called it their manifesto. They are not only do that, they are adding from whatever we put out.
“So we are not in a rush to put out for them to go and take and sell it and that is part of why Mr Obi made that statement. So after their own is out, you will formally see ours out, not giving them the opportunity to still respond against it,” he stated.
Prof Pat Utomi
Leader of the Big Tent
Member Presidential Advisory committee LP-PCC
