Apc vs Pdp idea tussle: is God involved in it

The two major political parties in the country are at
the threshold of dragging God into their contest of
ideas By Emmanue Aziken, THE National Publicity
Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC,
Alhaji Lai Mohammed was unusually reticent when
confronted with allegations that his party was tilted
towards Islam during a recent interaction with
newsmen in Lagos.
We know the impact of religion on our people and
we do not want to use it as an issue despite the
provocations by the PDP,” he told Vanguard.
Officials of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, had
in recent times sought to portray the leading
opposition party as a party that was bent towards
Muslims.
The PDP had in particular taken shots at the
constitution of the APC national executive which the
PDP said was dominated by Muslims.
The APC in line with its own pledge not to trigger the
religion issue for most of the time kept away from
responding except when some officials explained
that the national executive was made up of almost
an equal proportion of Muslims and Christians.
PDP officials, however, pressed that the principal
offices were kept for Muslims while Christians were
put up as deputies. The APC, irrespective of the
pokes waived away the issue as it kept focus on its
plans for the constitution of new executives at all
levels following the largely successful membership
registration exercise that ended a fortnight ago.
However, the issue of religion took another
dimension at the weekend after the APC unveiled its
manifesto at a well attended ceremony in the
federal capital. Prints of the manifesto Even before
the fine prints of the manifesto could reach the
general public and even the media, the newly
reinvented PDP publicity machine had dissected it
and slammed it as lacking in character and content
and the product of a janjaweed.
“The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has
described the manifesto which the All Progressives
Congress (APC) released as a product of a
Janjaweed ideology and the roadmap to anarchy.
The manifesto lacks character, depth and
completely addressed no issue,” Chief Olisa Metuh,
the PDP’s National Publicity Secretary said in a
press statement last Thursday. The PDP noted that
the manifesto put security low in the priority of the
APC was a confirmation of what it described as the
inclination of the party’s leaders to riotous
behaviour.
“When last year in its first official outing, the
leaders of the APC said terrorism in Nigeria would
disappear within 100 days of APC leadership,
Nigerians did ask if they knew the characters in
crime and their sponsors. APC gave silence as an
answer while Nigerians kept wondering. Today, the
Party has released its manifesto with loud silence
on the matter so that Nigerians would not raise
further questions on the face behind the terrorism
mask.”
The PDP reaction to the APC manifesto was a
deconstruction of the roadmap convyed in a way to
show the emptiness of the opposition party’s
programmes. What was particularly new in the
attack from the PDP was the claim that the
roadmap was framed from Janjaweed ideology. The
ideology obviously referred to the scorch earth
policy of the Janjaweed militia in Sudan which had
terrorised the population of Western Sudan.
It was an allegation that finally brought out the APC
to battle the PDP on the matter of religion. The party
last Sunday described the allegation as an act of
religious blackmail and in furtherance of what it
claimed as the ongoing campaign to portray the APC
as an Islamic party.
APC’s spokesman, Mohammed in his reaction to the
Janjaweed assertion by the PDP, said the PDP’s
assertion was a deliberate attempt to put Nigerian
Muslims in bad light describing the PDP as taking
the road of religious escapism. 
The only reason that the PDP used the
word eJanjaweedf is because the militia that goes
by that name comprises mostly, if not exclusively,
of people of Arab/Muslim stock in Sudan. 
This has further confirmed our fears that there is a
clear attempt by the PDP, led by President Goodluck
Jonathan, to divide Nigerians along religious lines as
never