PDP Plans Conference To ‘Salvage’ Economy, Electoral Reforms, Ensure National Security

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is planning to organize a conference with the hope of salvaging the nation’s security, economy, electoral reforms and other issues necessary for national stability.

The planned conference, the party hopes, will return the country to the path of peace, national cohesiveness and economic prosperity.

The opposition party said that it has already commenced consultations with stakeholders across board on ways to rescue the nation from misrule through institutional reforms ahead of the 2023 general elections.

PDP, in a statement by its spokesman, said that the National Chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus, disclosed the position of the party while receiving the British High Commission’s Political Counsellor on Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Jonathan Bacon, at the PDP national secretariat in Abuja on Friday.

Prince Secondus lamented that the nation is in her present sorry situation because all the electoral reforms achieved by the PDP to deepen the democracy prior to 2015 general election have been destroyed by the current All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration.

According to the party, Secondus said, “for five and half years now that the APC held sway, our democracy has been under severe stress. All critical institutions of democracy have been brutalized. The judiciary, legislature and the media have been under siege while human rights and rule of law; the necessary ingredients of democracy, have all been flagrantly abused.

“Though the APC administration came into power as beneficiary of a transparent and credible election conducted under the PDP, it has not been able to conduct any free and fair election but had rather continued to abuse our electoral process and frustrate the desires and efforts of Nigerians to further amend our Electoral Act to guarantee acceptable elections in our country.”

The PDP also disclosed how the National Chairman bewailed the escalated insecurity in the country under the APC and the lack of commitment on the path of the current administration to decisively tackle the outlaws and end the mindless killings, bloodletting, kidnaping, banditry and other acts of terrorism in the country.

The party said that Secondus lamented the security situation, which has reached a despondent curve where critical stakeholders, out of frustration, are now calling on the people to defend themselves in the face of government’s failure to defend them.

On the economy, the party revealed that Prince Secondus, noted that the present administration has plunged the nation into the worst economic hardship, which has been exacerbated by the incompetence and lack of clear-cut policy direction, insensitivity to the plight of Nigerians and unprecedented corruption of the APC administration.

“Indeed, this is not the way our nation should be. We must come together to rescue our nation by commencing critical conversations within the ambit of the law and democratic practice to salvage the situation,” the party said.

The National Chairman, the PDP said, commended the international community and development partners for their support especially in strengthening the electoral system and urged them to show more interest in Nigeria democracy ahead of 2023 general elections.

Bacon had earlier told Prince Secondus that he was in the Wadata Plaza to meet with the leadership of the PDP and discuss the United Kingdom/Nigeria bilateral relations.