The
Presidency on Sunday dismissed criticisms of the Goodluck Jonathan
administration by the two main opposition parties, saying their national
leaders-Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd) and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu were
“heavily burdened political liabilities.”
Senior Special Assistant to Jonathan on
Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, told journalists at a news conference
in Lagos, that the Peoples Democratic Party-led Federal Government
would not be distracted by their ‘empty’ criticisms.
Tinubu had at the ACN convention in
Lagos on Thursday, said “The current government’s trademark is to throw
empty words and hollow actions at our problems,” while Buhari vowed
that the All Progressives Congress would resist any move by the PDP to
rig elections in 2015.
But Okupe said Buhari and Tinubu, the
arrowheads of the move by the ACN, CPC and the All Nigeria Peoples Party
to fuse into APC, lacked “the antecedent that support their claim of
possessing what it takes to move Nigeria forward.”
He said, “It is evident that the
proposed merger revolves around two personalities only, Senator Tinubu
and Retd.- Gen. Buhari. Unfortunately, both are heavily burdened
political liabilities. ”
The Presidential aide described the
proposed merger as “incongruous alliance of political weaklings,
,dysfunctional Lilliputians and repeatedly frustrated political power
mongers.”
He claimed that the promoters of the
APC were desperate to “supplant the Jonathan administration,
forgetting that one million giant ants can never muster the required
strength to lift a concrete pole much less of a nationally entrenched
pillar and structurally established institution like the PDP.”
The Ogun State-born medical doctor
called the ACN a “motley assembly” lacking in internal democracy
and “notorious for outsourcing” its presidential candidates from the
PDP.
Noting that the ANPP “had existed for
13 years without any meaningful impact on the polity,” Okupe predicted
that the APC would likely pick its presidential candidate from the rank
of the PDP stalwarts..
He said, “It is noteworthy that the
major plank of this motley assembly, the ACN, is notorious for
outsourcing its presidential candidate from the ranks of the same PDP
they gleefully villify.
“In 2003, their choice was
Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, who now knows them better. In 2011, it
was a protégé of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu,
who filled the slot although he was later betrayed and sacrificed on
the altar of self interest.
“Presently, the debates within the
factionalised alliance suggest that they will not mind fielding another
PDP stalwart as their presidential candidate.”
Okupe said that the administration of
Tinubu in Lagos State was characterised by labour crisis and that it
did not at any time attain 60 per cent budget implementation.
He said, “The leader of the opposition,
Chief Bola Tinubu, who spoke disparagingly about the Federal Government
on a number of issues was once a governor of Nigeria’s richest state
for eight years and we all have a record of what he made of that
position.
“ Tinubu who spoke about meagre wages
for public servants in Nigeria was known to have ignored calls of Lagos
civil servants for a N7,500 monthly wage and when he eventually
buckled to the pressure of Labour leaders, he wickedly sacked the
arrowhead of the struggle in the person of Comrade Ayodele Akele, who
was never re-instated.
“Yet Tinubu spoke of the present
government as ‘heartless and mean that put the interest of small elite
above the interest of the common working man and woman who are the
backbone of this nation.”
On the National Chairman of the
ACN,Chief Bisi Akande, he noted that when he (Akande) was the governor
of Osun State, workers were denied N5,500 minimum wage.
He added that the Akande regime laid off over 9,000 workers during its four years in office.
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