By Kevwe Ebireri

The All Progressives Congress, APC, has strongly criticised President Goodluck Jonathan over what it described as his “illegal campaign trail” in Kano State on Tuesday, barely 24 hours after the deadly explosion that shook the Federal Capital Territory , FCT, and its neighbouring Nasarawa State that killed scores of people and left 124 others gravely injured.

The APC said President Jonathan erred badly by not showing enough sympathy for the victims of Monday’s blast, as his action show traits of an insensitive and utterly hardhearted leader and amounts to dancing gleefully on the graves of the dead.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, interim national publicity secretary of the party, Lai Mohammed, said the President’s quick return to the campaign train shows that his visit to the scene of the blast was merely to avoid the kind of public outcry he received for refusing to visit Yobe State where 43 school children were massacred recently.

”The message that President Jonathan is sending to Nigerians is that keeping his plum job, at all cost, is more important to him than the security and welfare of the same people who voted him into office. Otherwise, the President would not have rushed back to his illegal campaign trail at a time he should be leading the nation in mourning the dead,” the party said.

It wondered what was so important about the Kano rally on Tuesday that could not have waited for the smoke to clear from the scene of the deadly blast and if President Jonathan would put up the same unfeeling attitude if a family member had been affected.

Comparing events with neighbouring Kenya, the APC noted that more people died in the blast than from Kenya’s mall shooting last September, and yet President Uhuru Kenyatta declared three days of national mourning during which flags at public buildings flew at half mast and the people of Kenya prayed for the dead and the injured.

It reasoned that even if President Jonathan chose not to mourn the death of his citizens, he should have at least kept a low profile for a few days.

The APC also renewed its call on the President to urgently convene a
stakeholders’ summit and pursue a nonpartisan approach towards ending the insurgency, as it is now very obvious that the challenge posed by it is beyond the capacity of the government.