The Cross River State chapter of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has condemned the approach to sharing palliatives by the state government, accusing the state APC administration of sharing the palliatives in discriminatory and exclusionary manner.
In a statement by its state publicity secretary, Mike Ojisi, PDP urged the state government to immediately rescind the ‘obnoxious’, even ‘morbid’ policy and employ a more inclusive approach that recognizes the diverse political affiliations in the State.
“The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Cross River State, strongly condemns the APC-led government’s discriminatory and exclusionary approach to palliative sharing,” Ojisi said, stating that “this blatant victimization is a clear indication of the government’s disregard for non-partisan administration of citizens in a democracy and the principles of justice, fairness and equity.”
“The government’s actions are a betrayal of the trust placed in them by the people, a stark reminder of their intolerance for opposing views,” the PDP warned. “Most of all, it’s a sabotage of
President Tinubu’s good intentions to stem this social problem before it engulfs the entire country in a conflagration that might be unpredictable.
“We demand an immediate retraction of this unjust policy and a more inclusive approach
that recognizes the diverse political affiliations and even non affiliation of our citizens.”
The PDP also cautioned the APC administration in the state against cornering the palliatives, noting that they represent an action plan intended to make the effects of a problem less severe.
The party stressed that palliatives do not actually solve the problem of hardship, hunger, and high cost of commodities in the market caused by their maladministration, insisting that only good governance, which would organise the economy to be more productive, could solve the problem of hunger and poverty that the nine years of APC administration has imposed on Nigeria and citizens.
Besides, the PDP wondered why a government that is rumoured to have shared 10,000,000.00 (ten million naira) to cult groups in Calabar in the State Capital should be discriminating against citizens on the basis of political affiliation.
The party called on all Cross River stakeholders to join in condemning what it described as injustice and demand a non-partisan and more equitable distribution of the federally allocated palliatives.
The state chapter of the APC was yet to react to the allegations by the PDP as at the time of this report.
Recently the Director General of the State Emergency Management Agency, SEMA, Elder James Anam, confirmed receipt of food items from the federal government’s National Strategic Reserve.
According to him, the food items comprised garri =3,384 bags of 25kg; rice=24,000 bags of 25kg; maize = 14,040 bags of 50kg which, with the approval of the Governor, was swapped for Beans (600 bags of 100kg) and 800, 50kg bags of garri.
