The Presidential Candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the last election, Atiku Abubakar, has asked President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to take responsibility for the increasing wave of insecurity in the country rather than resorting to “disingenuous attempts” to explain away the sad development.
In a statement signed by Paul Ibe, his media adviser, Abubakar said: “The contrived report by a fictitious non-governmental organisation in the United States is the deepest low that Muhammadu Buhari administration has gone in causing further division and promoting instability in Nigeria.”
He further said that “Anyone versed enough in the protocol of international NGOs will discern without much ado that the particular report by a faceless, insipid organisation known as ‘Centre for Diplomacy and Democracy’ was contrived with express mobilisation from officials of the Buhari administration in a shameless and disingenuous attempt to find a jejune explanation for the rising rate of insecurity in Nigeria.”
Abubakar, who was also a former Vice President of Nigeria, said: “Our investigations have revealed that there is no such report as being touted and no such body called ‘Centre for Diplomacy and Democracy’. Americans will never write ‘Centre’. They will write ‘Center’ in conformity to the American English usage.
“It is so distasteful that the Buhari administration, rather than have a self-introspection and admit to the world that its policies and actions are responsible for the divisions in the country, with manifestation of all manner of crimes such as banditry, kidnapping and wanton killings across the land, chooses to employ the service of a faceless NGO to blame the opposition for its own ineptitude.”
“We must remind President Buhari that the buck stops on his table and his infantile style of looking for whom to blame for his failures will not obliterate his abysmal record of performance in the past four years,” he said.
He accused the Buhari administration and the ruling APC of thriving in propaganda and double-speak, adding that “Sadly, it does not matter to them the disturbing number of criminalities happening on daily basis in Nigeria. In their warped thinking, the performance rate of security chiefs during times like this is determined on how much weight the Inspector General of Police has lost. The question to ask is: how would the APC have reproved a president who makes such careless remarks on national security at a time when insecurity in the country has assumed epidemic proportions?”
He further said that “President Buhari and the APC have shown without equivocation that the job at hand is overwhelming for them. And because they lack the basic clue of how to tame the bogey that they have created, they now scamper around like school kids who have caused an upset in a highly sensitive science laboratory.
“Nigerians don’t pray for a president who passes the buck. All they want is a president who can hold the bull by the horns and get the job done. After all, President Buhari took an oath to defend lives and property of the citizens, which is the primary responsibility of every government.”
Iniobong Iwok
