Presidency on Friday reacted furiously to comments by Atiku Abubakar, the main opposition, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Presidential candidate in the February, 2019 Presidential election, on the alleged secret burial of over 1000 Nigerian Soldiers.
Atiku Abubakar had in his reaction to the Wall Street Journal report, called on President Muhammadu Buhari to set up Judicial Commission of enquiry to unravel the story.
In a statement, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, said “it was laughable, now it gets progressively pitiable, to see and hear efforts by presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the last general elections, Atiku Abubakar, appeal to the emotions of Nigerians, particularly members of the judiciary, perchance it would influence decision in the ongoing legal tussle over the result of the presidential poll.”
Presidency, noting that the military had duly countered the story, educating the Wall Street Journal on the hollowness of its publication, said “Abubakar has quickly weighed in on the matter, as part of his gambit to whip up emotions, and perhaps get the judiciary to reflect the “pulse of the nation” in its judgment.”
Presidency stated that Atiku who lost the last February poll by nearly four million votes, according to the independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, could “not fathom that in the space of a year, scores of great patriots were killed and buried secretly without their families being told.”
“In an apparent afterthought and doublespeak, he added that he was hesitant to believe that “such grand scale of deceit is even possible under a democracy, such as Nigeria is expected to be.”
“The above, rather than mitigate Abubakar’s position, gives him out as someone who denigrates the country’s democracy, which he was part of building, in his heyday, before unbridled ambition blinded.
“Yes, soldiers fighting insurgency and terrorism are great patriots. But the same can’t be said of anyone quick to believe any negative story about his country, however fictive and lacking in verity as the story could be. Well, except such person had the motive of whipping up negative sentiments and emotions, so that the judiciary could respond to the “pulse of the nation and reflect it.”
“We have told Abubakar and his co-travellers that the judiciary would always come to conclusions, drawing from matters of the law placed before it, and not sentiments or so-called “pulse of the nation.”
“Therefore, in vain does anybody labour to devalue the government and its military, thinking it would fall into a grand plan to get into office through artifice.
Presidency, while also noting that campaigns and elections for 2019 are long over. added that the country has moved on and that those who know it actually know it.
Presidency recalled Supreme Court recent pronouncement of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate as due winner of Osun State gubernatorial contest, where Abubakar chided the court, saying it should have considered “the pulse of the nation,” and reflected it in the judgment.
“That was when the jigsaw puzzle began to fall in place. Were most of the challenges in the country being orchestrated by hidden hostile hands, who think such would influence the judiciary, which would consider the so-called “pulse of the nation” in arriving at judgment on the presidential poll?
According to the Presidency, “Before and after the Osun State judgement, the PDP candidate had always been quick to play up negative developments in the country, the latest of which is the tendentious story by Wall Street Journal, alleging that about one thousand Nigerian soldiers had been recently killed by Boko Haram and Islamic State of West Africa terrorists, and secretly buried by Nigerian military authorities.”
Tony Ailemen, Abuja
