The
All Progressives Congress, APC, appears unshaken by the Presidency’s
strong-worded response to its interim national chairman – chief Bisi
Akande – to respect his old age following the latter’s assertion that
President Goodluck Jonathan is running a kindergarten show, saying the
Presidency was rattled by the truth.
APC,
in a statement issued in Accra, Ghana, on Monday by its National
Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, advised President Jonathan to
go to court if he felt insulted by the statement.
Mohammed
said Chief Akande merely told the truth by his characterization of the
Jonathan presidency, adding “Isn’t truth a defence to libel?”
The
opposition party noted that there was nothing strange or wrong in
criticizing a democratically-elected President so long as he is not an
Imperial President, a Monarchy nor an Emperor.
It
said nothing confirmed Chief Akande’s claim that Mr. Jonathan is
running a kindergarten presidency than the crude manner it (presidency)
responded to the frank but constructive criticism by the APC National
Chairman.
“In
the true character of this presidency, its increasingly irreverent and
undignified spokesman failed to respond to the issues raised by Chief
Akande, and instead chose to haul abuses at a man who is old enough to
be his father. Such irresponsible act does no credit to the spokesman or
the president he is serving, and Nigerians will definitely not forget
such crudity in a hurry.
“Where
is the presidency’s response to Chief Akande’s assertion that he has
written two letters to the President over the serious challenges facing
the country, without getting a response? Where is the presidency’s
response to Chief Akande’s assertion that President Jonathan is
witch-hunting political opponents? These are the issues that Nigerians
are interested in, not how many hours the President sleeps at night
because he is supposedly working tirelessly.
“In
any case, if indeed this President is working tirelessly, we need to
ask who he is working for, because Nigerians have yet to feel the impact
of his administration. They are also not interested in the fact that
the President once served as a deputy governor, governor and Vice
President, because the experiences he supposedly garnered from doing so
have not impacted positively on his duty as President. That’s not a
surprise, considering that the President owes his meteoric rise in
politics to luck and destiny. Nothing else!” the party said
APC described the presidency as an under-achieving one, always eager to celebrate tokenism using questionable statistics.
“As
the presidency was composing its empty response to the serious issues
raised by our highly-respected Chairman, the African Development Bank
was saying in its annual report (African Economic Outlook), quoted by
the local media on Sunday, that the proportion of people (Nigerians)
living below the national poverty line has worsened from 65.5 per cent
in 1996 to 69.0 per cent in 2010, most of those years under the PDP and
the last four under President Jonathan.
“What
therefore is there to celebrate in a presidency under which power
generation has fallen to 2,500MW? What is there to celebrate in a
presidency that has only given Nigerians widespread insecurity,
unemployment, dilapidated infrastructure, oil theft and unbridled
corruption. Of what use is the touted 6% increase in the GDP when over
40% of our youth are unemployed? APC queried
The
party also described the claim of a feud between its leaders, Asiwaju
Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as a figment of the
presidency’s imagination adding that the PDP and the presidency have
been peddling lies over a purported feud because they could not fathom
how the leadership of the APC could put national interest above personal
considerations.
“Mr.
President, don’t let your lick-spittle aides deceive you. There is
absolutely no feud between the two leaders. Waiting for such a feud is
like ‘Waiting for Godot’.” it said.
No comments:
Post a Comment