Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, and Atiku Abubakar, the PDP candidate, again exchanged barbs yesterday in their ongoing credibility contest.
The two got into a verbal fight over PDP’s response to Tinubu’s comments that “the traitors” have planned to undermine his triumph in the 2023 general election using the petrol shortage and the naira devaluation, which he made at the APC presidential rally in Abeokuta, Ogun State, on Wednesday.
Through his special assistant on public communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku responded to Tinubu’s claim that the current fuel and naira shortages were fabricated to undermine his victory in the upcoming presidential election. Atiku said the former Lagos governor was the only one upset because his plan to use bullion vans to bribe underprivileged voters and security personnel on the day of the election had failed horribly.
He charged Tinubu with attempting to blackmail President Buhari and laid the blame for the impending, catastrophic rejection of Buhari by Nigerians on the APC-led federal government.
However, Tinubu retaliated on the PDP and the former vice president yesterday, telling them to stop getting high off of their own cigarette smoke.
No political blackmail or scheme to sour relations between him and President Muhammadu Buhari, he claimed, will succeed.
Speaking through the APC presidential campaign council, Tinubu specifically accused Atiku and the PDP of attempting to misrepresent his comments regarding the shortage of petrol and the recently redesigned Naira notes.
“PDP and Atiku need to be careful not to overindulge in their own cigarette smoke. No attempt at political extortion or a rift between Tinubu and his steadfast ally, President Muhammadu Buhari, can be successful. The newest prank by Atiku and his handlers is consequently doomed to failure, we have bad news for them,” he said.
He claimed that by misrepresenting his assertion in Abeokuta that there were plots to sabotage the 2019 elections through a gasoline crisis and a redesign of naira notes, the opposition party tried to drive a wedge between him and Buhari.
The former Lagos governor claimed in a statement released on Thursday by Bayo Onanuga, director of media and publicity for the APC presidential campaign council, that Nigerians should no longer harbor any doubts about those collaborating with fifth columnists to cause them avoidable suffering in order to further nefarious political goals.
Onanuga said: “The opposition PDP and the Atiku camp issued a knee-jerk response, derailing from the issues, distorting Asiwaju’s statement and trying, in vain, to create a wedge between our presidential candidate and President Muhammadu Buhari. No sooner had Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu empathized with the Nigerian people facing the dual crises of fuel and scarcity of new Naira notes.
“The guilty try to push back with red-herring when they are terrified of being exposed. For the record, Asiwaju Tinubu did not name, criticize, or criticise President Muhammadu Buhari for the nation’s current problems during the APC campaign rally in Abeokuta on Wednesday.
“Asiwaju Tinubu was merely calling attention to the sabotage being carried out by some Fifth Columnists in the system, who may be in collusion with the PDP.
The CBN officials, including Governor Godwin Emefiele, have repeatedly claimed that the banks have received enough new Naira notes, yet our people continue to complain that they cannot obtain the new notes, according to Tinubu.
He said that Tinubu had just reiterated what was already well-known and acknowledged—even by President Buhari—at various fora, namely that there are Fifth Columnists both inside and outside of government who frequently sabotage the good intentions and government programs.
Additionally, Tinubu charged that the PDP was damaging the nation’s petroleum supply in order to use political blackmail to pressure the federal government.
Speaking to a crowd of party members at an APC presidential campaign rally in Markurdi, the capital of Benue State, Tinubu claimed that the PDP administration, while in office, had granted retail fuel licenses to their supporters and allies, who are now stockpiling fuel to cause long lines across the nation and torment Nigerians.
“They met good oil prices for 16 good years, they didn’t recall gas pipelines, and they are what I termed saboteurs yesterday,” he continued, referring to the PDP as the Poverty Development Party. They granted licenses to PMS to their allies and followers. They were the ones who first started making phony lines. PDP, the time has come.
Furthering his criticism on Atiku, the APC standard-bearer pointed out that the PDP candidate didn’t realize his claim that he was operating a transport company while employed by the Nigeria Customs Service violated a civil service rule in Nigeria.
“They questioned him, ‘How did you become so wealthy?’ He said that he worked in the transportation industry. He was unaware that was a crime. As a civil servant, farming is the only activity that is permitted, he said.
When addressing the needs of the youth of Benue, Tinubu pledged that his administration would guarantee access to high-quality education and student loans to enable gifted and impoverished kids to pursue higher education.
Asiwaju once more cited his accomplishments in Lagos as governor as justification for the Benue people to vote for him in his prepared address, which he did not read verbatim at the gathering. He also insisted that they would not be due salary.
He also pledged to resolve the state’s IDPs issue.
To assist businesses grow and local wages rise, Tinubu pledged to create agricultural and industrial centres if elected president.
In order to increase the state’s revenue, he also pledged to make Benue a leader in the world of agriculture.
I’m Out Of Your PMB Problem Now, Atiku Responses
Atiku, however, would not give in and yesterday came out swinging, pleading with Tinubu to release him from his dispute with Buhari that led to his “pouring of vitriolic on the person of Mr. President.”
Speaking through the Atiku/Okowa presidential campaign organization, Atiku said it is pitiful that Tinubu is now blaming the PDP for his problems less than 24 hours after accusing the Buhari administration of inducing artificial fuel shortages and redesigning the naira to thwart the 2023 election while standing on the public stage at his presidential rally in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Kola Ologbondiyan, the campaign team’s spokeswoman, remarked that it is odd that Tinubu wants everyone to think that his critical comments about Buhari were directed at Atiku and the PDP even though neither party is responsible for the country’s monetary policies or the failure to stop the horrifyingly never-ending fuel crisis.
It is crucial to remind Asiwaju Tinubu that he was aware that President Buhari is the Minister of Petroleum Resources and that all government agencies in charge of prospecting for and distributing petroleum resources fall under his (Buhari’s) office when he accused the “powers that be” of doing so in order to sabotage the election.
Asiwaju was aware that President Buhari had approved the redesign of the naira and that the APC-led federal government, not the PDP, is responsible for distributing naira notes.
“It is evident that Asiwaju’s vitriolic abuse of President Buhari is the official stance of his disjointed, bewildered, and chaotic Campaign Organization,” the author writes.
“It is noteworthy that Asiwaju Tinubu now seeks to blackmail the President and incite his followers to violence, with the intention of scuttling the electoral process and blaming it on President Buhari, having come to the conclusion on his own that he does not enjoy the support of President Buhari and realizing that his campaign is now crumbling with its leaders leaving in droves given his manifest rejection by Nigerians.
This further explains why Asiwaju Tinubu organized the potentially lethal militia group known as the Jagaban Army, which is said to be being prepared to inflict violence on Nigerians and end the electoral process after realizing that he has no chance of winning in a free, fair, and credible election.
Asiwaju Tinubu “had always sought to absolve himself and blame only President Buhari for the failure of the APC administration, despite the fact that he (Tinubu) is behind the corruption-ridden policies of the APC government that have brought on untold hardships to Nigerians in the last seven and a half years.”
Atiku said that Tinubu’s vocal about-face in less than 24 hours has painted him as someone who shouldn’t be trusted with authority.
PDP Requests DSS Interrogation Of Asiwaju Regarding Revolution, Riots Call
Similar to that, the PDP claimed it had informed the Department of State Services (DSS) and other pertinent authorities of Tinubu’s plans to destabilize the nation through a violent revolution and riots. Tinubu is the APC’s presidential contender.
Phrank Shaibu, Atiku’s special assistant on public communications, claimed that Tinubu’s outburst on January 26, 2023, at the APC rally in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State, was a precursor to the mayhem the Lagos godfather was planned.
Atiku recalled that Tinubu practically declared himself the winner of an election that is taking place in 29 days while addressing a gathering in Abeokuta, employing the same entitlement attitude that he had previously employed to coerce his party members into receiving the ticket for the general election.
“However, we reiterate that his language does not reflect someone who, in the event of an impending electoral loss, will accept defeat. This is a revolution, he declared in Yoruba. This vote represents a revolution. They oppose our right to vote. They intend to disperse it. Will you concur? No… A revolution is coming from me.
“Tinubu is not too powerful, he does not enjoy any privileges, and he is not above the law to be questioned by either the Department of State Services or the Nigerian police. It is important to take the APC flag bearer’s remarks seriously in order to prevent violence in the upcoming election. For the avoidance of doubt, a revolution is defined in political science as “the forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system.”
Shuiabu said that it is ironic that one month before an election in which he is running, Tinubu, who has been the national leader of his political party for more than eight years, is now threatening a revolution against a government that is being governed by his party.
In essence, he claims that if he cannot have it, no one else will.
Remember how Tinubu boasted in the same Yoruba language and in Abeokuta earlier in June 2022 about how President Buhari wept on national television after his electoral defeats and how he (Tinubu) made him President? It is no coincidence that he went to Abeokuta just seven months later to accuse and disparage President Muhammadu and the APC-led Federal Government of trying to thwart his efforts.
According to the evidence we have, Tinubu has started paying some of his quackery activists to organize protests in key cities around the nation, particularly Abuja, in an effort to incite violence before the elections, which he will lose.
“On the surface, the demonstrations will be in response to the continuing gasoline shortage, which he had declined to address before the election. In an effort to persuade the country’s top bank to extend the deadline for the currency swap, some protests will also be organized in front of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“While the right to protest is unalienable for Nigerians, Tinubu’s allegation that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was responsible for the shortage of gasoline and the new naira currency is absurd considering that the PDP has not been in office for the past eight years.
“Tinubu has no honor at whatsoever, as his former campaign manager Hajia Najaatu Mohammed said on Arise Television. His religion and essence are money. As he did with his party’s presidential ticket last year, he wants to use bullion vehicles to purchase the election, but this will never happen.
