Nigeria's Opposition Slams Ruling Party on Insecurity
Nigeria's main opposition party has taken up the issue of insecurity, slamming President Goodluck Jonathan's party for failing to stem the rising violence, ahead of what it calls "watershed" elections next year.
Africa's most populous country and biggest economy will go to the polls in February 2015 to elect a new president and parliament, overshadowed by a five-year insurgency by Boko Haram Islamists who have killed thousands and whose abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls two months ago sparked global outrage.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) held its convention in Abuja on Friday and elected new national officers in the run-up to the crucial vote. Former governor of southern Edo state John Oyegun emerged as the new chairman, while the party slated November for the selection of its presidential candidate.
"Our country is at its lowest moment since the end of the unfortunate civil war in 1970," former APC interim chairman Bisi Akande told thousands of party supporters at the convention, recalling the 30-month war that broke out when the southeast Igbo people attempted a secede from Nigeria and form a Republic of Biafra.
The inability of government to end the Boko Haram violence has made Nigeria, which used to be a regional military power, "a subject of some form of global assistance after it was apparently overwhelmed by security challenges," he said.
International surveillance and intelligence specialists from the United States, Britain, France and Israel have been trying to help find the kidnapped girls.
While some of the teenagers have escaped from their captors, 219 are still held by the extremists since the April 14 abduction from their school dormitory in the remote northeastern town of Chibok.
Jonathan's Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has controlled the federal government since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 but is facing unprecedented divisions in the run-up to the vote.
Former military ruler and APC presidential hopeful Muhammadu Buhari described the 2015 polls as a "watershed" and urged Nigerians to vote out the PDP he accused of destroying the country.
"We have remained resolved to make sure that this country that we have helped to build, nobody should completely destroy it. Enough destruction has been done," said Buhari, a former military ruler.
"Stand firm. Vote for APC. Let's get this country moving again."
Former vice president Atiku Abubakar who contested the 2011 election but was defeated by Jonathan, said the ruling party had nothing to offer the country.
"Today, Nigerians you have got the opportunity to change a government that is corrupt, that is inept, that is weak, that has no clue. This government has no business being in office after 2015," he said.
Jonathan has so far refused to declare his plans but is widely expected to seek re-election, even as he is up against mounting pressure within his own party to stand aside.
He has been accused of breaking an unwritten rule in the PDP which calls for the presidency to rotate between Christians from the south, like Jonathan, and Muslims from the north.
Source: Agence France Presse
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