APC admits Daura was on PMB’s campaign team

After denying on Thursday that Lawan Daura, director-general of the Department of State Services (DSS), is a member of its party as claimed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the All Progressives Congress (APC) has admitted that Katsina-born security expert served on the presidential campaign committee of Muhammadu Buhari.

APC insists, though, that he is not a card-carrying member of the party.

After PDP alleged that Daura is a member of APC, newspaper cutout showing the name of the DSS DG on the list of the security directorate of president campaign organisation went viral. So also were a photo of the DG with other campaign committee members, as well as another with Buhari at the APC secretariat in Abuja, after he won the election.

But the APC said nothing short of producing Daura’s membership card or evidence of his membership registration will convince discerning Nigerians that he is indeed a member of the party as alleged by the PDP.

“While it amounts to rabble-rousing and crass politicking for the PDP to have wrongly accused Mr Daura of being a member of the APC without a scintilla of credible evidence, the PDP has weakened its argument by using the pictures in which Mr Daura appeared with the President and the fact that he served in an election committee as evidence of his membership of the APC,” the party said in a statement issued in Lagos on Friday by Lai Mohammed, its spokesman.

“Possession of an APC membership card by Mr Daura or evidence of registration as a party member at his ward, local government or state will be the only conclusive evidence of his membership of the party. Until such an evidence is produced, we are sorry we have to tell the PDP to shut up.”

APC added: “The PDP was jittery because it was keenly aware of the kind of impunity perpetrated under the federal government it sired from 1999 to 2015.

“PDP has forgotten the saying that he who must come to equity must come with clean hands. When Mr Mike Okiro chaired the security committee of the PDP campaign in 2011, did that prevent him from being appointed the chair of the Police Service Commission, which is responsible for issues concerning the welfare, promotion and discipline of all police personnel, in 2013?

“When director-general of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mr. Mike Omeri, was appointed into the Jonathan election committee in 2015, did he resign his appointment as head of the agency or did he automatically become a card-carrying member of the PDP?

“Did retired Col Kayode Are not become the DG of the DSS despite being a close confidante of Obasanjo during his electioneering campaign to become president? Was this not under a PDP federal government?

“In any case, even in the world’s most advance democracy, United States, was a card-carrying Democrat, Mr Leon Panetta, not named as head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by President Barack Obama in 2009? Here in Nigeria, the APC-led FG has not even gone that far, and the PDP is blabbing.

“It is an irony that the APC-led federal government, which has continued to conduct the affairs of state with a strict adherence to the law, is the one being accused by the immoral, irresponsible and grossly hypocritical PDP. A party that should cover its face in shame for wasting all of 16 years in the life of our country, a party whose members should show penance by hunkering down has continued to assault the sensibilities of a decent nation. What a shame.”