Why the PDP Is Ten Times Better Than the APC, By Femi Aribisala

I have said time and again that I am not a member of the PDP. I am saying it again. I have never been and will never be a member of any political party in Nigeria. I have also said I do not know personally, have never met or even ever spoken to President Goodluck Jonathan, although I remain as ardent in his support as I was during the 2015 election.

Before you call me a liar, let me state here for the record that I finally had the privilege of speaking to President Jonathan a few weeks ago. A nice lady named Doris phoned me, pleased she was finally able to reach me. She had a simple message: President Jonathan would like to speak to me. She then gave me his phone number.

So, I finally had the opportunity to speak to President Jonathan for the very first time. Speaking to him took me back to thinking about the heady days of the 2015 presidential elections. I am of the opinion that history is already beginning to vindicate President Jonathan and to restore his legacy, in spite of the incessant propaganda of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

We have now had three-and-a-half years of APC rule. We have now seen what APC’s ‘change’ actually entails. We are no longer under any illusions. Even though the APC has spent the last few years re-litigating what was wrong with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it should now be clear that the PDP is far better than the APC; at least ten times better.

Stolen Ideas

In three-and-a-half years in power, there is no single original idea of note that has emanated from the APC. What it has been doing is to claim PDP’s ideas as its own. APC claims credit for the Treasury Single Account (TSA) when in fact it is of PDP inspiration. It claims credit for the turn-around maintenance of our refineries, when it is in fact a Jonathan/PDP legacy. It claims credit for increased rice production in Nigeria, when it was the PDP that achieved this.

APC claims credit for the rehabilitation of rail lines in Nigeria, but the truth is that this was essentially a PDP initiative. It claimed that PDP stole the money earmarked for buying weapons to fight Boko Haram, then went ahead to use the same weapons it said were non-existent to equip the army to fight Boko Haram. Former Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) chairman, Sam Amadi, stressed that improvements in power supply are the result of the efforts made by the Jonathan administration.

If we are now celebrating the end of polio in Nigeria, it has nothing to do with the APC and everything to do with the PDP. If we are indeed well on our way to self-sufficiency in rice production, it is because of the activities of the PDP, and not because of the inactivity of APC. In three-and-a-half years, APC has added precious little to PDP’s achievements. On the contrary, it has degraded many of the milestonesattained earlier.