The All Progressives Congress on Tuesday sharply criticized Tanimu Turaki, the factional National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, over what it described as a reckless and unpatriotic appeal for foreign intervention in Nigeria’s political affairs.
Turaki had earlier called on United States President Donald Trump to “save democracy in Nigeria” amid a violent leadership struggle rocking the opposition party.
In a statement issued in Abuja, APC National Publicity Secretary Felix Morka accused Turaki of effectively inviting “a call for foreign invasion of Nigeria,” warning that such statements threaten the country’s sovereignty.
“For a man declared National Chairman barely 72 hours ago by a faction of his deeply fractured party, Turaki looked and sounded desperate, at his wits’ end, confused, incoherent, and grossly lacking in stamina and capacity to manage his party’s crisis,” the ruling party said.
The APC emphasized that Nigerians expected Turaki to “set himself on an urgent peace-building mission” to reconcile PDP’s warring factions instead of calling on foreign powers to intervene.
“Turaki’s first official act as factional chairman was his call for foreign invasion of Nigeria as a solution to the self-inflicted internal crisis of his PDP. That is as shameless as it is a dangerous threat to national security and sovereignty,” the statement added.
The condemnation followed Turaki’s appeal to Trump and other “advanced democracies” after Tuesday’s chaotic events at the PDP national secretariat. The clash involved the faction loyal to Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, and the faction backed by Governors Bala Mohammed, Seyi Makinde, Ahmadu Fintiri, and Caleb Muftwang.
Addressing journalists after the confrontation, Turaki said, “I want to call on President Trump. What is at stake is not just a genocide against Nigerian Christians. He should come and save democracy in Nigeria. Democracy is under threat. I am calling on all other developed nations, all advanced democracies. Come and save Nigeria, come and save democracy.”
He further accused Wike,who was expelled from the PDP on Saturday, of storming the secretariat with loyalists and security personnel to disrupt the party’s planned National Executive Committee meetings.
The APC stated that Turaki’s appeal to foreign powers “is not only an admission of the party’s incapacity to manage its internal contradictions, it must be taken as a final certification of the PDP’s demise.”
“We trust the international community to dismiss the PDP’s disgraceful and unpatriotic call as a pitiful distraction from the failure of its internal democracy and embarrassing disintegration,” the party concluded, urging Nigerians to continue supporting President Bola Tinubu’s leadership.
