The Action Congress of Nigeria has accused the Peoples Democratic Party of planning to arrest development and progress in all states controlled by the party by manipulating banks, including the apex bank, the capital market, financial institutions and regulatory authorities to withdraw financial support to all ACN states through a sustained campaign of blackmail, calumny and arm twisting.
In a statement issued in Lagos by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said it could authoritatively reveal that the first phase of this plot is for the PDP to make available to the Honourable Ministers of Finance and National Planning and the Director General of the Debt Management Office false representation of the debt profiles of ACN states accompanied by wild and unsubstantiated allegations of financial recklessness and improprieties against ACN states for deliberation at the next meeting of the Federal Executive Council.
According to the party, the Federal Government will then enlist the support of the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor who will table the contrived damning indictment before the Bankers Committee, which will unsuspectingly withdraw their financial support from all ACN states.
The ACN said the PDP-led Federal Government will not stop at this.
It said in the statement that the PDP will thereafter manipulate its appointees at the Nigerian Stock Exchange, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other relevant regulatory authorities to block the ACN states’ access to the Capital Market even as the same Federal Government itself had resorted to the same Capital Market to fund its own deficit budget.
The party recalled that the Peoples Democratic Party when it had no answer to Lagos State’s unprecedented developmental successes under the administration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu employed this same devious plot and would have succeeded in arresting the phenomenal success of that administration but for the financial ingenuity and resourcefulness of the former governor.
The ACN added: “The recent unrelenting and sustained smear campaign against the ACN governors by the do nothing Peoples Democratic Party is nothing but a prelude to this grand conspiracy to financially cripple all ACN states.
“Rather than emulate the giant strides of the ACN states, especially in the areas of security, youth employment, infrastructural development etc, and make life more meaningful and bearable for the millions of citizens under its watch, the Peoples Democratic Party has true to character resorted to this evil plan to stunt the growth of the ACN states and condemn the people of these states to a life of misery, poverty, chaos and hardship as is the norm in almost all PDP-led states.”