Newspaper report- APC: plot against Buhari, Tinubu won’t stop us.

No threat can stop the merger of parties to kick out the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) said yesterday.

There is allegedly a presidential directive to stop the All Progressives Congress (APC) — the vehicle for the merger. But the ACN said the leadership of the party cannot be cowed by an executive order to jettison its resolve to rescue Nigeria democratically.

ACN said it was going ahead with the plan to unseat the PDP in 2015. But the Presidency denied that there was an order to frustrate any political group.

In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the ACN alleged a plot by the Presidency to cripple its National Leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s businesses.

Mohammed described the plot as an addition to the initial plan to discredit and silence outspoken opposition leaders, including Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) leader Gen Muhammadu Buhari.

“We will like to add that part of this plan is to hurt his

(Tinubu) business interests, scare off most of his business partners and political associates, try to pin some activities of Boko Haram on him and generally go after the leading figures, including governors in the APC initiative,” Mohammed claimed in the statement.

He said any clampdown on the APC leadership would be of no consequence on the APC rescue mission, especially when Nigerians are clamouring for a change.

The statement reads: “Nigerians are yearning for change. Therefore, targeting our leaders won’t help the disappearing behemoth, whose so-called reconciliation efforts have even worsened its plight.

“Needless to say that every attempt or attack on perceived political opponents by the government and its apparatchiks will be revealed, contested and resisted.

‘’The leaders of APC know what they are up against and are mindful that the battle ahead may be rough and difficult, yet they are irrevocably committed to establishing a party that will sound the death knell of the bumbling PDP and bring development to Nigeria.”

According to the ACN, all the attempts being made to thwart the registration of the APC by some suspicious money bags were parts of the scripts from the seat of power and the highest echelon of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

It accused the leadership of the ruling party of abandoning governance for dirty politics, midway into the next general elections.

Commenting on a media report published yesterday, which alleged that a March 26 presidential directive was issued for everything to be done to frustrate the merger of opposition parties, the ACN said such move was expected.

It said: “ACN recalled that in a statement it issued on January 8, 2013, it alerted the nation to the desperate measures being taken by the PDP-led Federal Government to discredit and silence key opposition leaders, especially Tinubu and his CPC counterpart, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, as well as their political associates.

“The report confirmed what we already knew, including the sinister plan to stop Tinubu ahead of the 2015 elections.

“But there is also another plan, which is to ensure that elections either do not hold in 2015 or that they will hold under curfew.

“To achieve this, those who have now succumbed to a mortal fear of the APC are stoking the fire of violence across the country, either through incompetent handling of existing crisis or by instigating fresh ones.

“With the Northeast and the Northwest in the throes of violence, the Southwest is their next target in this regard, and we will reveal the full details of their shenanigans in due course.”

The party warned: “The do-or-die politics or violence for whatever reason will not spare anyone, including the instigators, just as constricting the democratic space will eventually stifle democracy.”