A chieftain of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), Olawepo-Hashim, has cautioned political actors against further widening the existing gulf and divisions in the country in their race and ambition to clinch the 2023 polls.
An issued statement from the APC chieftain’s media office yesterday, in Abuja, explained that rather than addressing issues that are germaine to our nationhood, “the actors have been inflaming the passion of tribal and religious anger among the people”. He, therefore, warned that “the nation cannot afford to crash this democratic process on the altar of narrow self-interest by politicians who are merely on a mission of personal ambition and self-aggrandisement”.
Olawepo-Hashim, who was the former presidential candidate of the People’s Trust in the 2019 elections, also accused the supporters of the presidential candidates of driving their campaigns for their candidates through intimidation, threat, disinformation and blackmail, without any word of caution from their principals.
The APC chieftain recalled that campaigns in the past were built around issues that had been properly elucidated in the party’s manifesto, adding that “Parties were also held accountable for their programmes and the candidates toed the line of the parties in their conducts and utterances”. He, however, lamented that “what is at play presently is sadly at variance with the good old days. While the country is presently held down by the demons of insecurity, energy/power, education and unemployment crisis, the parties and the political actors are dancing around these critical issues”.
He also said that “sadly, the North is currently being divided between Christians and Muslims and ‘not-Muslim-enough’, while the South is been ripped apart by propaganda that pitches Christians of the South-West against their Muslim siblings, i.e., Yorubas on the one hand against Ibos on the other hand, as well as the old against the young”.
The parties, he said, have lost their voices and supremacy to the rampaging candidates and their army of supporters, a development he said portends danger if not tamed.
