The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has warned National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, against attacking the party just to curry political favours from President Muhammadu Buhari.
In a Tuesday statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP said that Tinubu’s criticism of the party in faraway Mecca, Saudi Arabia while meeting Buhari showed that the former Lagos governor had nothing to offer towards the nation’s development.
A presidential statement had quoted Tinubu as saying that the PDP was reputed for “saucy and distractive statements’’.
He further urged Nigerians not to be angry with the opposition party, but assist them to overcome their “colossal defeat” in the February 2019 elections.
However, the PDP accused Tinubu of meeting Buhari during the Umrah and in the holy month of Ramadan in Saudi Arabia just to “gossip”.
The statement said that the PDP berated Tinubu for “resorting to hauling insults against the PDP to curry political relevance, ostensibly for his selfish pecuniary interests”.
It further read, “The party says by travelling to faraway Mecca, at this Ramadan period, just to meet President Muhammadu Buhari and engage in gossips, invectives and diatribes against the PDP, Asiwaju Tinubu has further demonstrated that he has nothing to offer towards the development of our nation.
“It is atrocious that at the time other leaders are in the Holy Land offering prayers and supplications for our nation, Asiwaju Tinubu is in Mecca for photo-ops, playing dirty politics and hauling insults at other Nigerians just to curry relevance before President Buhari.
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“The party noted that nothing but sheer hypocrisy would push Asiwaju Tinubu to engage in unholy praises of a failed administration in a desperation to avert the purported threats by certain agents of the Buhari Presidency to expose him.
“This is the same Asiwaju Tinubu, who, in January 2018, at the 15th Annual Daily Trust Dialogue, berated the Buhari administration for its nepotism, incompetence, corrupt oil subsidy regime; blaming it for the high-level poverty in our country and counseled Nigerians to be guided by their conscience in electing leaders in the 2019 general elections.
“Asiwaju, in criticizing the Buhari administration held rightly that “too much political and economic power resides in the hands of too few. This result in a society described by too much of unemployment, inadequate infrastructure, too little food, yet too much poverty”.
“He then added correctly that under President Buhari, “rather than becoming a joyous nation, Nigeria has become a cruel playground where the fears and concerns of the average person get exploited but their interests never get promoted.”
“The PDP therefore lambasted Asiwaju Tinubu for making allusion to its determination with Nigerians to retrieve Atiku Abubakar’s stolen Presidential mandate at the court, adding that no amount of blackmail can detract from this resolve.
“The party cautioned Asiwaju Tinubu to call himself to order, particularly as Nigerians, including members of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), have seen through his power-grabbing antics and are now determined to give him the back seat treatment.”