A fresh war of words ensued yesterday between President Goodluck Jonathan and the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, over alleged attempts by the President to weaken his main challenger’s chances at the March 28 election.
The APC candidate accused Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party of plotting to thwart the electoral process by freezing the bank accounts of his party’s chieftains and grounding their aircraft.
Buhari, in a statement by the spokesman for the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Garba Shehu, described the alleged plot as “bestial and undemocratic.”
He said the plot to destabilise the APC and cripple his campaign may be linked to the unsettling global attention on the party after his “triumphant performance” at the United Kingdom’s think tank, Chatham House, on Thursday, despite a futile public protest by a PDP rented crowd in London.
APC in a separate statement by its spokesman, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, described as “untrue” the claim by the Jonathan campaign organisation that the party’s National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, was plotting to become vicepresident “through the back door.” However, the PDP Presidential Campaign Council’s spokesman, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, fired back, calling on Nigerians to ask APC leaders how they acquired their private jets.
Speaking further, the Buhari campaign council said, “In as much as we understand politics to be a game of wits and guts, yet the desperate way and manner the PDP and its henchmen are going is anathema, criminal and inimical to our nascent democracy and civilised human behaviour. Hence, any attempt by anyone to cripple the APC and its presidential candidate will be foiled by the citizens who have taken over the movement of change as symbolised by General Muhammadu Buhari.
“The hint we gather from sources is that the government, through its agents, is plotting to ground aircraft and freeze bank accounts of APC stakeholders. But history has shown that the forces of evil can never succeed against the zeal of men and women of virtue and good deeds.
“Information at our disposal has uncovered the ruinous plan by the Jonathan administration to use the Aviation Ministry and secret arm of the security service to hound and clamp down on members of the APC, by prospecting obnoxious means that would ground private jets belonging to senior members of our party, in order to halt and slow down Buhari’s world-acclaimed phenomenal popularity as President-in-waiting.
“There is also a plot to block or freeze the bank accounts of APC chieftains like Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Governor Rotimi Amaechi (Director General of APC Presidential Campaign Organisation), and other prominent leaders believed to be funding the General’s campaign; and availing him their aircraft for electioneering purposes.” It noted that private aircraft conveying Amaechi and Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, were in 2013 either prevented from taking-off or landing during crucial political occasions.
It said this was particularly during the “infamous” Ekiti State gubernatorial elections that saw PDP’s Ayodele Fayose “defeating” Governor Kayode Fayemi in a most controversial “military-assisted” contest now known as “Ekiti-gate tape.” In the party’s statement titled ‘Claim of Tinubu/ Osinbajo oath by PDP outlandish,’ Mohammed said the Jonathan Administration and PDP still do not have any answer to what has now become an epochal moment that has separated the wheat from the chaff.
“Our presidential candidate’s globally-acclaimed outing has presented Nigerians, and indeed the global community, with a choice between a bumbling, ineffective, incoherent, clueless, visionless and incompetent President and an assertive, knowledgeable, dignified, purposeful and principled President-in-waiting.
“Having failed to discredit that outing with a rented crowd, some of whom confessed to have been paid to carry placards they do not even understand, the PDP and the Jonathan Administration have now resorted to making nauseating claims that are totally untrue, absolutely incomprehensible and nothing but sheer bunkum.”
According to APC, the claim that Tinubu was plotting to ask Osinbajo to resign so he could become the vice-president was the latest in a series of desperate moves by Jonathan and PDP, since Buhari’s emergence as the APC presidential candidate; and the clearest indication yet that they have no answer to the unstoppable momentum of a man of history.
APC said, “They have thrown everything imaginable at Gen. Buhari, but he has continued to wax stronger and stronger: They said he was not qualified, that he was too old, then they fabricated a medical report of an illness of their own choice, sponsored death wish adverts against him and instituted a myriad of court cases to stop him. “After they failed to stop him, they went after the election itself, using the PVCs as a tool to launch a campaign for postponement.
When they realised that would not work, they came up with the bogey of insecurity in the North-East to force a postponement of the election, hoping they can buy enough time to revive their electoral misfortune. “With everything working against them, they engaged in a show of shame at The Chatham House that backfired badly, on the heels of their bare-faced lies that Gen. Buhari was hospitalised in London. The preposterous claim of a secret oath – reminiscent of what they do in their own party – by the apparently ailing spokesman of the Jonathan Campaign Organization, Femi Fani-Kayode, is their latest desperate act.”
Responding to Buhari’s claims, Fani-Kayode said it was interesting that APC had admitted, for the first time, that their leaders own private jets. He said “It is interesting that the APC has, for the very first time, admitted that some of its leaders own private jets.
It will be interesting to know from the APC how these leaders who either occupied public offices or still occupy public offices acquired these jets. In fact, where did the money with which they procured the jets come from? “And this is the APC whose leaders pretend to occupy a moral high ground and accuse everyone else except themselves of malfeasance.
“Once again, it is clear that the APC leaders have become prisoners of their own delusions and they are being held captive by their own hallucinations. This is a clear case of extreme paranoia. “They are running under the bed when nobody is chasing them. There are no plans to clamp down on anybody in the opposition
. Our only plan is to humiliate them before the Nigerian people on March 28 by giving them a crushing defeat.” In a separate statement titled ‘APC cannot deny Tinubu’s conspiracy to supplant Osinbajo and Buhari,’Fani-Kayode described Mohammed’s response as “feeble.” “From the APC’s response, it is clear that they have something to hide. They clearly cannot deny this dangerous plot.
Does a vampire ever admit to being a vampire? Did Dr. Jeckyll ever tell anyone that he was also Mr. Hyde? Does a demon ever admit to being a demon? Does darkness ever admit to being darkness? Do people that are obsessed with taking power at all costs and by any means ever admit that they are obsessed and desperate? “We are not surprised by the denials of the APC in this matter. They are and will always be a party built on lies and headed by liars.
The APC are now throwing stones and hurling baseless allegations and insults at our President, our leaders and our party. They forget that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. It is not the PDP whose presidential candidate killed people by the application of retroactive legislation and that sent innocent men to their early graves by sending them to jail unlawfully for hundreds of years without any recourse to due process.
“It is not the PDP whose leaders play religious politics and who cannot make a distinction between a political party and a cult. We stand by our claims and the only thing that is outlandish in this matter is the bizarre and insatiable lust for power of the APC and those that are premising their presidential ambition on someone else’s demise. “Such morbid projections have no place in any civilised society.
The truth is that the APC is a party that is used to sordid, bizarre, byzantine and subterranean back-room deals where people take bloodchilling and cultic oaths and in which people are asked to sign perjurous and illegal letters of resignation even before they are elected into office.
If anyone doubts that they should ask Pastor Tunde Bakare who was asked to sign a letter of resignation by both Tinubu and Buhari in 2011 even when he had not been elected to the exalted position of Vice President.
“We wish General Buhari good health and long life and it is only a small handful of desperate and unconscionable elements within the leadership of his own party that wish him otherwise.
We advise him to watch his back and take full measures to protect himself against these desperate elements because their plan is, at worse, for either Tinubu to take over the position of vice-president after the planned resignation of Osinbajo and then wait for something untoward to happen to Buhari so that he can take over or, at best, for Osinbajo to take over and for Tinubu to rule through him.”
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