By Lesley Muosowo Otu
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has condemned what it alleged as the latest attempt by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to rubbish the commendable efforts of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration in tackling the scourge of Covid-19 pandemic.
The APC National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, stated this in a press release made available to Newsdiaryonline on Sunday.
He said, “this is yet another infantile, desperate and sinister attempt by the opposition party to play petty politics with a serious matter of national and international importance.
“The latest baseless accusation by the PDP that the APC-led government has not lived up to its responsibility of protecting the people of Kano State against the backdrop of some deaths recorded in the State is a case in point.
He added: “this allegation is not only baseless, but very irresponsible. It is false in its entirety.
“Shockingly, while all well-meaning organisations, home and abroad, and individuals are putting in positive shifts to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic, PDP has rather chosen to dance on the graves of the unfortunate Nigerians that have been killed by the disease.
“PDP has this rare opportunity to stand up to be counted by making positive contributions to end the scourge, but this opposition party thinks this is the time to politicise Coronavirus cases and deaths, particularly in Kano State.
“We invite the PDP to borrow a leaf from the patriotic efforts being made by the cross-party platform, the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), who has kept politics aside and joined the President Buhari government in jointly, proactively and frontally combating the pandemic which is currently a threat to our very existence”, the statement reads.
Issa-Onilu said that weeks before the pandemic hit Nigeria, the APC administration had started taking practical steps in preparation for it.
He said, “the PDP may claim to be unaware but emergency operations centres have been established in States to serve as coordination platforms and are networked to a national incident coordination centre.
“From just about four testing laboratory centres, NCDC has 15 testing centres as at today with testing capacity increasing to over 3000 daily from just a few hundreds weeks ago.
“It is clear that no single country, including the advanced nations can boasts of adequate capacity to respond at once to this pandemic while working hard to scale up capacity to contain the spread of COVID-19 and in the same vein making efforts to find a cure for it, the APC-led government has not been found wanting in protecting the lives of all Nigerians except for PDP that is incurably irrational”, the statement reads.
In furtherance to that the APC said that Nigeria has received commendations from bodies like the World Health Organisation (WHO), the European Union with the Presidents of West African countries under the aegis of ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government also appointing President Muhammadu Buhari as Champion of the COVID-19 response.
“We may never know the damage caused by the ill-advised rally held by PDP in Oyo State but it suits the opposition party to attack the Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje to score cheap political points.
He added that, the opposition party believes that there should be a Presidential movement to anywhere in this country at this period least of a densely populated city like Kano.
“Have they suddenly forgotten what it means to have the President visit Kano State at a period like this that requires social distancing and when much of the country is under a lockdown order?
“Nigerians should ask PDP if it is praying that the whole of Kano and indeed Nigeria be swarming with Corvid-19 cases and corpses in order to fit into its known and unpatriotic wishes against our beloved country”.
