The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has said President Muhammadu Buhari, who is also the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, is not interested in ensuring free, fair and credible elections in 2019.
\nAtiku\u2019s party, the PDP, also accused the President of planning to extend the service of the Inspector General of Police , Ibrahim Idris, in order to use him to manipulate the presidential elections in favour of the APC.
\nAtiku said this while speaking through the spokesperson for the PDP Presidential Campaign Council, Umar Sani, at a press briefing in Lagos, yesterday.
\nAlso, the PDP\u2019s rejection of the IGP\u2019s service extension was stated at the same briefing which had the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan in attendance.
\nAtiku said it was evident that Buhari was not interested in credible elections because his refusal to sign the Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2018 despite the provisions in the bill to address election manipulations was a manifestation of his intention.
\nThe PDP Presidential Campaign Council\u2019s spokesperson said, \u201c Elections are usually manipulated at coalition centres and the amendments in the Electoral Bill is trying to prevent this but the President has refused to sign it.
\n\u201c When former President Goodluck Jonathan was in office, he was pressurised to extend the service of the then IGP, MD Abubakar but he did not succumb. Election was also close then and he refused to succumb to the pressure to extend his service.
\n\u201c We will not accept this now, we won\u2019t accept anything less than what was done then. A precedent has been set, so we won\u2019t accept anything less.\u201d
\nSani said Atiku had continued to say that he would engage younger persons with brilliant ideas and energy to drive the economy of the nation, saying an enabling environment would be created for businesses to thrive.
\nThis, he said, would translate to job creation while stressing that Atiku, who was an entrepreneur and a good manager of humans and resources would unite the nation and reposition its economy to make life better for the people.
\nHe explained that Atiku would also initiate the process of restructuring of the country which he had been promising in his electioneering while urging the electorate to discountenance the alleged lie of the ruling party that the PDP candidate said he would restructure the country in six months.
\nSani said it was not enough to have integrity, saying Buhari had brought disaster to the economy and other aspects of the nation because he lacked the required competence to govern Nigeria.
\nOlogbondiyan stated that no administration in Nigeria has been found to be as corrupt as the Buhari administration. He said Buhari\u2019s lieutenants had stolen so much from the public treasury but said the most painful thing was that the President had kept looking at another direction each time his aides were fingered in corrupt practices.
\nHe said, \u201c We reject the any extension of service for the IGP. We in PDP reject this. We know what the President is planning to do by the extension of service is to use the IG to perpetrate his rigging plan.
\n\u201c We want to appeal to the IGP to insulate Nigeria Police from partisan politics. From the body language of Mr President, it is evident that he is not ready for free and fair elections in 2019.\u201d
\nMeanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Organization (PDPPCO) has accused the Presidency and the All Progressive Congress (APC) of hawking the 2023 presidency to secure votes for next year\u2019s election.
\nThis followed the promised by different key officials of the administration including Vice President Yemi Osinbajo asking different regions to vote for President Muhammadu Buhari so that they may have the 2023 presidential slot.
\nBut in a statement issued by the spokesman of the campaign organization, Kassim Afegbua in Abuja on Sunday, the PDPPCO said the move was in desperation to hang on to power despite its abysmal failure so far.
\nIt noted that the ruling party has \u201cresorted to trading with the lure of 2023 presidency, promising both the South East and South West respectively of the 2023 presidency in exchange for votes.\u201d
\nThe statement said giving out two promises has exposed the insincerity and dubious intention of the Buhari-led Federal Government with the people of the South-East and South-West geopolitical zones with empty promises of bequeathing power to the two zones at the same time in 2023.
\nAccording to the campaign spokesman, this is why Nigerians cannot take the APC and the Buhari presidency serious any longer, as we prepare for the 2019 election.
\nThe statement recalled that speaking on behalf of President Buhari in Owerri last week, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, told the APC campaign that the President would hand over the reins of power to a South-Easterner while calling on the people to support Mr President.
\nIt pointed out that meanwhile, the Vice President also told leaders of the South-West to support the re-election of President Buhari so as to get the presidency in 2023.
\nThe statement added: \u201cTwo principal officers of the same government cannot be fooling Nigerians with vainglorious promises all in the name of re-election.
\n\u201cSuch discordant tunes by the first and second citizens of our dear country have exposed lack of synergy and display of double standard and double-speak by chieftains of a government that has continued to display wanton desperation to hold on to power at all cost in the face of monumental failure.
\n\u201cHow can the president be promising South-Easterners the Presidency when his Vice President is also promising the South-Westerners same position in 2023, all in the name of 2019 re-election?.
\n\u201cThis is a clear show of deceit, desperation, crass insincerity and hypocrisy of the highest order. This is a clarion call on the South-Easterners not to trust such carrot being dangled before them as it has become obvious that this government neither fulfils promises nor keeps any covenant.
\n\u201cThe same government cannot promise the Igbos and Yorubas at the same time if it were sincere about the shape of politics of 2023 presidency.
\n\u201cThis government has an uncommon reputation for deceit, lies, insincerity and hypocrisy especially when it has to do with its 2019 re-election bid.
\n\u201cNigerians are beginning to see through the pretensions and dubiety of purpose of the Buhari-led Federal Government; a government that has shown its incapacitation and leadership atrophy in the last three years and crippled the fabric of our collegiate solidarity and unity through nepotism and cronyism.
\n\u201cThe president cannot, on the one hand, be playing God by decreeing which zone it intends to bequeath the reins of power, while his Vice President, on the other hand, is also promising his South-West zone of the same position.
\n\u201cThis is a typical feature of power hawkers, in their desperation to hoodwink buyers to patronise their morbid products.
\n\u201cThe Nigerian public must wake up to this double-speak and vote out this inconsistent government in 2019.
\n\u201cIt is a responsibility that every Nigerian must buy into in order to save the country from further maladies and misgovernance.\u201d
\nAlso, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Organisation (PPCO) has demanded for apology from President Muhammadu Buhari for allegedly making false claims in his Wednesday\u2019s budget presentation to the National Assembly.
\nThe Director, Media and Publicity of PPCO, Kola Ologbondiyan, said in a statement issued in Abuja last Saturday that the organisation noted with consternation, \u201cthe deliberate reliance on falsehood\u201d by President Buhari in the 2019 budget presentation.
\nThe campaign spokesman said Nigerians and the international community were shocked as fact-checks revealed that a large part of the claims made by Mr. President, particularly on projects he claimed to have completed, were outright falsehood, apparently designed by the Buhari Presidency to mislead the nation and the world.
\nHe observed that the fact-checks showed that most of the projects which Mr President claimed to have been completed did not have the least attention of his administration, if they existed at all.
\nHe added: \u201cOf particular reference is President Buhari\u2019s claim that he had completed the Ugwashi-Uku Dam in Delta State, a claim which casts a long shadow on his assertions, as the project had been abandoned since 2015.
\n\u201cIn fact, the dam, which President Buhari barefacedly said he had completed, is overgrown with weeds, while the road leading to the complex has collapsed.
\n\u201cThe scenario is mostly the same in other capital projects, particularly those in remote parts of the country, which, perhaps, our dear President thought Nigerians would not fact-check on.
\n\u201cThis explained why federal lawmakers booed him during his budget presentation, a development that is unprecedented in our national history.
\n\u201cIn his desperate plot to nudge up a trajectory of dismal performance, President Buhari resorted to falsification of achievements, thereby violating his oath of office, the oath of allegiance to the people of Nigeria and corrupted our national performance indices.
\n\u201cThis elevation of lies to a standard practice of governance is embarrassing and the PPCO completely condemns it.
\n\u201cAll over the world, leaders of nations are expected to be truthful in their dealings, but this is no longer the case as it concerns our dear nation.
\n\u201cWhile we do not want to call Mr. President a liar, we urge him to tell Nigerians, in his own words, what he would call a person who claims to have done what he did not do, particularly, given his perception by a minority few as Mr. Integrity.\u201d
\nThe PPCO invited Nigerians to note that since fact-checks exposed the myriads of false claims in Mr. President\u2019s budget speech, the Presidency had not offered any form of explanation.
\n\u201cThis goes to show that the claims were deliberate and intended to mislead,\u201d he stated further, adding that \u201cNigerians will recall that the PDP had always alerted that the Buhari Presidency had nothing to offer Nigerians except lies, falsehood, deception, beguilement, intimidation, harassment, hunger, starvation and disobedience of court orders.\u201d
\nThe PPCO, therefore, charged President Buhari to apologise to Nigerians and get his handlers to turn a new leaf \u201cand save his reputation from further nose-diving within the few months he has left in office as the President.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has said President Muhammadu Buhari, who is also the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, is not interested in ensuring free, fair and credible elections in 2019. Atiku\u2019s party, the PDP, also accused the President of planning to extend the service of the Inspector […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191216,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=191214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/191216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}