2015: ACN joins Buhari’s CPC to attack Presidency

Gen. Buhari

MORE missiles were fired yesterday in the Presidency-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari battle.

Two leading opposition parties queued up behind the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) presidential candidate in last year’s election in his scathing attack on the Dr. Goodluck Jonathan administration and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Buhari had warned of dire consequences, should the PDP rig the 2015 elections “the way it did in 2011”.

But the Presidency and the PDP fired back at him. The PDP described Gen. Buhari as “blood thirsty”. The Presidency said he is “a sectional leader” and “a serial loser” always encouraging violence.

Yesterday, the CPC and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) rose in defence of Buhari.

The AC N said Buhari’s caution was “timely and in order”.

The CPC said the Jonathan administration is “the political Boko Haram”.

The ACN denounced “the crude, vitriolic and impudent verbal attack” on Gen. Buhari by the Presidency and the PDP for no other reason than his timely warning against election rigging in 2015.

In a statement issued in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the statement for which Gen. Buhari is being savaged was nothing but a warning against those who may be planning to rig the 2015 general elections.

It said the viciousness of the seemingly co-ordinated attacks by the Presidency and the PDP raise a lot of concern regarding their plans for the 2015 elections.

‘’We hold no brief for anyone. But it is true that if elections are rigged, as they have been so shamelessly and brazenly done by the PDP since 1999, naturally, people will react, and in doing so it is impossible for anyone to predict how far things can go. This is what, in our opinion, Gen. Buhari warned against. If the Presidency and the PDP have no intention to rig in 2015, why are they so worried about the consequences of such action?’’ ACN queried.

The party said “the 2011 general elections remain the most systematically-rigged polls in Nigeria’s history, irrespective of the so-called endorsement by some visceral foreign election monitors.

‘’The 2011 elections also left Nigeria divided along ethnic and religious lines, more than at any other time in the history of Nigeria, hence no one should tell us about the polls being the best since Nigeria returned to civil rule, just because some self-acclaimed monitors said so.’’ 

The party also expressed concern at the growing propensity of the Presidency, in particular, to use intemperate language in its response to any statement it perceives to be critical of its principal.

‘’We have said it before and we will like to repeat it: any statement emanating from the Presidency must be presidential through the use of civilised and elevating language, rather than beer parlour and unguarded phrases. This is because such statements are read all over the world, and provide a window into the minds of those overseeing the affairs of state.

‘’The voice of the presidential spokesman is the voice of his principal, the President. That is why his statements must be sober and guarded, in addition to reflecting deep introspection. The insults heaped on Gen. Buhari, a former Head of State - for merely exercising his right to freedom of speech is totally unacceptable and run against the tenets of decorum and mature political discourse,’’ it said.

ACN said, however, that it is not surprised at the response of the PDP, since it is becoming increasingly clear to all that nothing good can come out of a party that has wasted all the opportunities that could have made Nigeria a proud member of the international community in the past 13 years.

The CPC yesterday vowed to ensure that the Federal Government come to terms with the fact that the PDP administration is linked with the Boko Haram sect.

Listing the events and accusations from various quarters, it said: “General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) was quoted as saying that the Jonathan-led Federal Government is the greatest Boko-Haram. Understandably, this elicited awful response from the President. In a jejune, puerile, and very pedestrian communication, the presidential spokesman defined Boko-Haram as “Western education is sin” and went on to posit the administration’s investment in Education. How awkwardly inane could that be?! 

“It is common knowledge that Boko-Haram has become the euphemism for subtlety in devious schemes that cause mass killings of the innocents! As GMB aptly stated, Boko Haram has three variants, with varying degrees of severity and murderous content: the original Boko-Haram that seeks to avenge the extra-judicial killing of its Leader by the Nigeria Police; the Boko Haram that pursues criminality for monetary gains and, of course, the Political Boko Haram that is bent on setting the stage for ethno-religious pogrom in the Nigerian nation. It is the Political Boko Haram, with its extremely lethal content, that the Jonathan-led Federal Government represents!

“In January 2012, Dr Goodluck Jonathan told a bewildered nation, still smarting from murderous bombings, that his government has been infiltrated by Boko Haram. In February 2012, a serving PDP senator from Borno South (Mohammed Ali Ndume) was arrested for being a member of Boko Haram.

“In March 2012, Ndume deposed to an affidavit before a Federal High Court wherein he stated that Vice-President Namadi Sambo was aware of his activities with Boko Haram. In April 2012, General Andrew Owoeye Azazi , the National Security Adviser, averred that there was indisputable proof that Boko Haram is PDP. As things stand, President Goodluck Jonathan is the national leader of PDP.

“In April 2012, Henry Okah (while standing trial on terrorism charges) deposed to an affidavit before a South African court that President Goodluck Jonathan was the sponsor of the October 1, 2010 bombing at Eagle Square. It is on record that as governor of a Niger-Delta State, Dr Goodluck Jonathan (together with his brother governors) had used the MEND to command the attention of the Nigerian state.”

According to the statement issued in Abuja by CPC National Publicity Secretary Rotimi Fashakin, the party said it was aware of the role played by Jonathan’s PDP in the way “the People’s post-electoral angst (at the subversion of their electoral will) was turned into murderous ethno-religious mayhem.”

The statement reads: “Meanwhile, with the hullaballoo that Dr Jonathan and his PDP elements have unwittingly caused within the polity, should it be interpreted that there is a real effort towards ensuring that the 2015 election is also rigged as before in giving him to the PDP leaders’ claim of ruling Nigeria for 60 years? As a nation, we are witnesses to the manner in which rigged elections have foisted on the Nation cluelessness in governance and rapacious impudence; it is indeed a dreary road to tread.

“We insist that it is never ignoble to lose elections because President Abraham Lincoln, before being reputed to be the best American President that ever existed, was known to have lost elections several times. GMB, though lost Presidential elections three times to the rigging collusion of the Nigerian presidency and the electoral umpire, took the loss each time (like Abraham Lincoln) with equanimity!

“The Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, has noted the response of Dr Goodluck Jonathan, as President of Nigeria, to the altruistic statement credited to our National Leader, General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) wherein he had stated inter-alia dire consequences for the perpetual riggers of our electoral process in 2015. In the statement signed by Dr Reuben Abati, Special Adviser to the President on Media, GMB was grotesquely characterized as a sectional leader.

“First, GMB has been out of office as Head of Government for about 28 years, yet his relevance to the Nigerian nation is something firmly acknowledged by a broad spectrum of Nigerians, including his adversaries. As Head of State, his Oil Minister was Professor Tam David-West, a Kalabari man in Rivers state. As a Leader, he created the ambience for his ministers to work unobtrusively and devoid of executive meddlesomeness. But what do we find with Dr Goodluck Jonathan? All the appointees as Oil ministers in his two-year reign thus far as President of Nigeria have been Nigerians of Ijaw extraction, like himself!

“Second, in October 1, 2010, there was a bomb blast during the year’s independence anniversary celebrations, with attendant deaths of many Nigerians. Without waiting for any preliminary report from the Security Agencies, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, as President, told a traumatized Nation, “it is not MEND!” Meanwhile, MEND is the name for the militant group from Dr Good-luck Jonathan’s ethnic extraction that had in the immediate past waged relentless and potent insurgency against the Nigerian state but had been placated with more slice of the Nation’s resources ceded to the region. Indeed, MEND impugned the President’s statement and admitted responsibility.

“Third, so far as President of Nigeria, Dr Goodluck Jonathan has shown very generous affinity for Nigerians of Ijaw stock in terms of appointments and promotions in the Federal Public sector. There is a marked lopsidedness that smacks of clannishness and ethnocentrism by the President!

“On Corruption and sleazy tendency, the Jonathan administration transcends all others before it! Nigerians are still befuddled by the impeachable show of arbitrariness by the regime in expending N2.67Trillion on fuel subsidy instead of the appropriated N240Billion in the 2011 appropriation act. As expected, the regime has attempted all manner of subterfuge to give Executive cover for the indicted people in the scam, who were the bank-rollers of the President’s electioneering campaign. Could it be that the missing money was funneled deliberately to the Jonathan Presidential Campaigns, with the acquiescence of the President?”

CPC said the party would  continue to trumpet the sterling qualities of the Buhari brand which is still a rarity among the Political players in our nation’s season of anomie adding that: “We stand unwaveringly by the statement credited to GMB!”