No more rancour, acrimony in national budget, says APC
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that the rancour and acrimony that attended the previous budgets will no more be observed, because of the harmonious relationship between the Executive and the Legislature.
The party also said that there is a commitment to invest in economically productive sectors in the coming year.
Speaking to correspondents at the party secretariat in Abuja on Thursday, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi said: “We are very delighted that the 2018 budget was presented and as we can see, there is a renewed commitment to invest in economically productive sectors in the coming year.
“I have read a couple of analysis on the budget and noticed that yes, there are different options but we, as a party are happy with the budget presented and the promises by the National Assembly to give the budget speedy assessment.
“We are very happy also that they have promised speedy review of the budget and the passage as soon as possible. What excites us most was that the kind of rancor and acrimony that attended the previous budget given the relationship between the legislature and the executive is not going to happen again, the relationship has been mended. We are now confident as a party that the two arms of government will work smoothly and closely going forward. We are happy that we are going to start next year in a more harmonious and coordinated manner.”
On the forth coming Anambra State governorship election, the party spokesman said acrimonies must arise no matter the effort.
“Whenever we go into primaries as in the case of Anambra where we have 12 aspirants, there must be one level of acrimony or the other, no matter the effort you make. But what we have done was to get everybody to rally round the candidate.
“Yes, there will be residual issues, but I can tell you that all of us are working together and have all lined up behind our candidate Dr Tony Nwoye to ensure that we win the election in the state.
“The issue of party members not working together does not arise; all party faithful including the Minister of Labor who is the leader of the party in the state are together and all of us are working to ensure victory for the party.
“The National Campaign chairman, Mohammed Abubakar, governor of Bauchi State has been meeting with all stakeholders up till yesterday, we were still meeting to strategise and of course you know that the President will be visiting the grand finale of the campaign.
“So, all of us are working to ensure victory, because the state is very important to the party and we understand the significance of the state election. We are pulling everything together and everybody is working together to ensure success in Anambra State,” he said.
When asked about the plans by the party to use security agencies to rig the state election, Bolaji said: “We believe strongly that the speculations of APC deploring soldiers to rig Anambra election is just a mere rumour, because there is no evidence to that and if anybody tells you that the party is planning to deploy Civil Defense, police, soldiers or whatever to do anything in the state, tell the person to provide the evidence.”
According to the party spokesman, the allegations that APC is planning to hound 50 PDP members to jail is unfounded.
“I don’t know who is making that allegation and it would have been better that the person roll out the names in the list of persons to be arrested.
“A couple of former governors were invited by the EFCC for questioning on their financial conduct during their tenure in office. One way to preempt that is to claim that there is a threat to muscle the opposition.
“I have said that as political parties, we don’t arrest and if anybody has issues with the power to arrest, the person should go and deal with it instead of politicising it. We are concerned with the art of winning elections as a party not arresting anybody,” he said.
Tom Okpe, Abuja
