By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan
Pan Yoruba socio political organization, Afenifere has cautioned candidates contesting in the general elections to stop heating up the nation’s political terrain with the ongoing increasing verbal and physical attacks during their electioneering campaigns
Handling down the warning in a statement on Sunday evening by its National Publicity Secretary, Comrade Jare Ajayi, Afenifere declared that instead of engaging in verbal and physical attacks, candidates in the forthcoming election should let Nigerians know their programmes aimed at moving the country forward
Afenifere maintained that there was no basis for the increasing wave of verbal and physical attacks by candidates and their political parties as such will not benefit the nation’s growing democracy.
” Candidates and political parties that have good programmes to execute would not resort to verbal or physical attacks. We urge political parties and their candidates to focus on what plans they have to put an end or at least ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians”, it said.
Afenifere added, ” they should let us know that they understand they enormity of the problems facing us and that they have solutions to these problems. An end should be put to mutual self-abuse either verbally or physically” .
According to Afenifere, ” Political parties and their candidates should focus on issues regarding how they will tackle the myriad of challenges that the country is facing rather than coming up with utterances and actions that border on “de-marketing of opponents and possibly causing bodily harms on other people”.
The Pan Yoruba socio political organization lamented that Nigerian politicians ought to have matured beyond the seeming villainy they currently display, and that the verbal attacks emanating from some candidates and their spokespersons were encouraging their unscrupulous supporters to violently attack opponents in a manner that could result in bloodshed.
” As the days for the general elections draw near, the Pan Yoruba socio-political organization, Afenifere, has expressed concern over the increasing verbal and physical attacks that are characterizing election campaigns in various parts of the country.”
