The All Progressives Congress and many of its members serving in government have issued a plethora of statements since the successful hosting of the national summit of opposition political parties at Ibadan on Saturday, 25th April, 2026.
One of their numerous pain points arising therefrom is the historical recollection of ‘wetie’ – a sad descent into uncontrollable violence, caused by the political greed of the then ruling party and its concomitant asphyxiation of the opposition.
This recollection was embedded in the speech of the host, Governor Oluseyi Makinde. The federal government and the APC have described that recollection as a call to violence and have since been reacting with the panic of an animal cornered by its own misdeeds.
In response, we state as follows:
The use of history in the way and manner done by Governor Makinde in the said speech served as a caution and advisory to the Federal Government, the APC, and other national institutions, of the unmitigated crisis that their actions and inactions can result in.
Only a guilty aggressor can interpret it to mean a threat or call to violence. It is common knowledge that those who do not learn from history are doomed by it.
Governor Makinde offered a sobering reminder that when insatiable political greed and avarice replace patriotism and good governance, and are compounded by the
accumulated anger and frustrations of the citizenry, the resultant conflagration will be of immeasurable proportion.
This again is a fact that history bears witness to.
The events that led to the sad incident of ‘wetie’ and the current happenings within the political space, as orchestrated by the APC, are not just similar but identical in both intent and execution.
To continue doing the same thing while expecting a different result is the very definition of political recklessness. When pushed to the wall, people have no other direction to go but forward, against the wall itself.
The current slide into elected totalitarianism has been entirely
engineered by the APC and the Federal Government.
They cannot decry the effect while remaining willfully blind to the cause and to their own culpability in it.
When the APC was in opposition, they did not merely threaten violence, they openly promised to make the country ungovernable, with the infamous baboon and blood narrative.
They therefore lack any moral capacity to complain about a mere historical
recollection by a sitting governor.
As long as the targeted state-sponsored decimation of the opposition continues, the opposition parties will explore increasingly potent strategies, entirely within the ambit of the law, to prevent the enthronement of a one-party state under an elected dictator.
The APC should be ashamed of their comprehensive failure in both governance and politics, and their resort to the crude tactics of inducement, intimidation and persecution of opposition leaders.
Finally, the responsibility for any violence in the build-up to or immediately after the 2027 elections lies squarely at the doors of the Federal Government, the All Progressives Congress,
INEC, and every national institution charged with the defence of democracy. The citizens know the aggressors from the victims, and the APC’s attempt to play victim has failed woefully.
Signed:
Comrade Ini Ememobong, mnipr
National Publicity Secretary
Peoples Democratic Party