The All Progressives Congress (APC) at the weekend dismissed as sickening and outlandish the claim by the Jonathan Campaign Organisation that the APC national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, plans to become Vice President through the back door in the event of the party winning this month’s election.
The APC said the claim was merely designed by the PDP to divert attention from “the runaway success of the APC presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, at the Chatham House in London last Thursday.”
The APC National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said in a statement in London that the PDP and the Jonathan Administration “still do not have any answer to what has now become an epochal moment that has separated the wheat from the chaff.”
Buhari’s globally-acclaimed outing, Mohammed said, “has presented Nigerians, and indeed the global community, with a choice between a bumbling, ineffective, incoherent, clueless, visionless and incompetent President and an assertive, knowledgeable, dignified, purposeful and principled President-in-waiting.
‘’Having failed to discredit that outing with a rented crowd, some of whom confessed to have been paid to carry placards they do not even understand, the PDP and the Jonathan Administration have now resorted to making nauseating claims that are totally untrue, absolutely incomprehensible and nothing but sheer bunkum.’’
APC said the claim is “the latest in a series of desperate moves by the PDP and the Jonathan Administration since the emergence of Buhari as the APC presidential candidate, and the clearest indication yet that they have no answer to the unstoppable momentum of a man of history.
“They have thrown everything imaginable at Buhari, but he has continued to wax stronger and stronger: They said he was not qualified, that he was too old, then they fabricated a medical report of an illness of their own choice, sponsored death wish adverts against him and instituted a myriad of court cases to stop him.
“After they failed to stop him, they went after the election itself, using the PVCs as a tool to launch a campaign for postponement and, when they realised that would not work, came up with the bogey of insecurity in the North-East to force a postponement of the election, hoping they can buy enough time to revive their electoral misfortune.
‘’With everything working against them, they engaged in a show of shame at The Chatham House that backfired badly, on the heels of their bare-faced lies that Buhari was hospitalised in London. The preposterous claim of a secret oath – reminiscent of what they do in their own party – by the apparently ailing spokesman of the Jonathan Campaign Organisation, Femi Fani-Kayode, is their latest desperate act.’’
APC said in as much as it has so far refrained from engaging Fani-Kayode in his game of character assassination, abuses and irresponsible name calling, it is “becoming seriously concerned that he may be caving in under pressure and reverting to his undignified past.”
The PDP had said Tinubu had made the APC presidential running mate, Professor Yemi Osinbajo swear to an oath to step down for him on assumption of office.
In a separate statement on the allegation, Coordinator of the Buhari/ Osinbajo Presidential campaign organisation in Osun State, Senator Oyetunde Husain, said it was an indication of PDP’s envy and fear of the political capacity of Tinubu.
Husain said the allegation also “reflects the level of desperation and the effect of it on the thinking faculty of the managers of President Jonathan and the PDP.”
He added: “the PDP is a party that has long abandoned its primary assignment of governance; they were busy inflicting hardship on the people and neglecting their welfare, while Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other, were busy strategising daily on how to rescue Nigeria from the fangs of corruption, ineptitude and cluelessness.”