2015: PDP, APC begin debates, trade blames on insecurity

Ahead of the 2015 General Elections the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday in Abuja tackled each other on the rising insecurity and state of economy of Nigeria's.The Deputy National Chairman (North-East) of the APC Alhaji Inuwa Abdulkadir and his PDP counterpart Dr Katch Ononuju also presented their parties' agenda to end the insecurity and unemployment in the country at the maiden Nigerian Political Parties Discussion Series (NPPDS) debate series organized by Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) and the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).In her opening remark the Director of CDD, Idayat Hassan, underscored the need to ensure that the 2015 election campaigns were based on issues that affected the life of Nigerians. Yesterday's event mark the commencement of formal debates by parties for the 2015 elections.The debate which was moderated by Mr. Mac Imoni Amarere was centred on 'Addressing the rising insecurity in Nigeria, what is the master plan'.Ononuju said the PDP has created a stable and progressive economy for 16 years and that the problem with the Military started after the APC Presidential Candidate as a Military Head of States took over governance and stopped trainings the military.'The Federal Government had commenced the process of rebuilding the country's security services, including the army, the police and the Department of State Services (DSS) among others. The government had started training the army, recruiting more soldiers and providing the needed equipment for the troops which capacity he claimed had been undermined by the military government,' Ononuju said.He however admitted that the ceaseless Boko Haram attacks in the country were a challenge because the government and was never prepared for the menace.Responding Inuwa said the APC when it comes to power would ensure adequate community policing through the establishment of state controlled police, so as to curb the protracted security challenges in the country.'I do not think Nigerians are satisfied with the current system of policing. I do not think all the armed forces put together, are commiserate with our population and land mass. We have to be dynamic and we don't have to continue what we inherited from colonial masters. We look at the immediate and we are futuristic in our thinking, what is happening today is a combination of the imbalance of the past, which the PDP government could not control and that is why we have so Nigerian territories under siege,' he said.While opposing the view of the PDP on the Almajiri educational system in the north, Inuwa said the intervention had institutionalized street begging in the region and that the federal government had no business in the running of educational policies in primary and secondary schools.
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