The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has slammed President Muhammadu Buhari for saying that Nigerians “who feel they have another country may choose to go”.
Buhari said this in a Monday statement through his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, while playing glowing tributes to his deputy during his military administration between 1983 and 1985, Gen. Tunde Idiagbon.
Buhari, who spoke when he received All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship aspirants and members of the party from the three senatorial zones of Kwara State at the State House, Abuja, said, “You don’t have to be in uniform to be loyal. What I said long ago in 1984 is still valid today. We have no other country but Nigeria. Others who feel they have another country may choose to go. We will stay here and salvage it together.”
But the PDP described the statement as ” fresh outburst against suffering Nigerians” which is “unpresidential, defeatist and characteristic of a failed leadership, which has lost all sense of responsibility towards its citizens”.
In a Wednesday statement through its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party said, “Buhari, in saying that Nigerians, “who feel they have another country may choose to go”, has further confirmed that he is completely insensitive to the plight of our citizens and has no solution to the myriad of problems his incompetent and disorganized administration has caused our nation.
“The PDP describes such comment as ‘unfatherly’ and a direct slap on the sensibilities of millions of Nigerians, who have been painfully bearing the economic hardship, hunger and starvation caused by President Buhari’s wasteful and inept administration, to the extent that many have taken to suicide missions and slavery as survival options.
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“Such comment is a putrid spit on the graves of thousands of compatriots killed by marauders in various parts of the country, while the Buhari Presidency and dysfunctional All Progressives Congress (APC) remained aloof without decisive actions to end the carnage and bring the perpetrators of the bloodlettings to book.
“Mr. President’s comment is also a mockery on millions of Nigerians who have lost their businesses and whose families have been wrecked by the anti-people policies of the Buhari-led APC administration.
“Since Mr. President now knows that Nigerians across board are hurting over the failures of his administrations, the least he, as an elected leader, should have done, was to accept responsibility, rise up to the occasion and find solutions, or at least, have some soothing words to suffering Nigerians instead of dismissing their pains and asking them to abandon their fatherland.
“This remark by Mr. President also reminds of his widely condemned outbursts against our youths who he held in disdain as lazy and lovers of freebies.
“President Buhari should come to terms with the fact that majority of Nigerians can no longer take the failures, insensitivity and incompetence of his administration and have now reached a consensus to elect our Presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who has always displayed a commitment to the welfare of Nigerians.
“This nation belongs to all of us. Our citizens believe and love their fatherland and will never abandon it, notwithstanding the anguish and pains brought by the failures of President Buhari and his corrupt cabal who have, with impunity, continued to display the worst form of aloofness and insensitivity to the plight of our people.”