A Chieftain of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), Olawepo-Hashim, has warned presidential candidates of the various political parties to stop widening the existing gulf and divisions among Nigerians in their bid to clinch the 2023 polls.
A statement from the media office of the former presidential candidate of the People’s Trust in the 2019 elections on Sunday 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.”
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He 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 which 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 maintained 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 pitch Christians of the South West against their Muslim siblings; on the one hand, Yorubas against the 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 portend danger if not tamed.
