PDP playing cheap politics with security challenges, says Lai

Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, says the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is playing “cheap” politics with serious national issues.

On Monday, Uche Secondus, PDP national chairman, had urged the federal government to employ more security personnel and enforce state policing, among other recommendations.

Bukola Saraki, former senate president, had said the opposition party would continue to pressure the government to address the country’s security challenges.

Speaking on Tuesday, Mohammed said the recommendations of the opposition party were contained in a report released after the federal government’s town hall meeting in Kaduna in April.

“The recommendations by the PDP have exposed the opposition party’s gimmickry, and the fact that it was merely playing politics with serious national issues, especially security,” the minister said in a statement.

“Had it not been so, and had it done its homework properly, the PDP would have known that most of those same recommendations were already contained in the outcome of the Federal Government’s Town Hall Meeting on National Security, which was held in Kaduna on April 8th 2021.

“The PDP accused this Federal Government of not engaging and of running a government of exclusion, forgetting, conveniently, that this Federal Government has consistently engaged Nigerians on topical national issues, including security, the fight against corruption, terrorism, infrastructure and farmer-herder conflict.

“The Town Hall Meeting series, which we launched in 2016, has so far been held 18 times across Nigeria.”

Mohammed said the recommendation from the town hall meeting has been forwarded to the national economic council (NEC) for further action.

“As a prelude to adopting the recommendations, the NEC has directed all state governors to organize state-wide consultation on them, and then revert to the council in its next meeting,” he said.

“You can now see that the PDP was more interested in playing politics with national challenges than helping to find solutions to them. We acknowledge the challenges we face as a nation and we are doing everything possible to tackle them.

“We call on all Nigerians to support the efforts of the federal government to tackle the challenges.”