The All Progressives Congress, APC, yesterday urged President Goodluck Jonathan to go to court, if he felt libeled by the description of his presidency as kindergarten by its Interim National Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande. The party also denied the existence of a feud between two of its leaders, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd).
According to the APC
, the PDP and the presidency have been peddling lies over a phantom feud because they could not fathom how its leadership could put national interest above personal considerations.
In a statement issued in Accra yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, APC said Chief Akande merely told the truth by his characterisation of the Jonathan presidency.
It also said there was nothing strange or wrong in criticising a democratically- elected President, noting that Jonathan is neither an Imperial President, a Monarchy nor an Emperor. APC said nothing confirmed Chief Akande’s assertion that Jonathan is running a kindergarten presidency than the crude manner it (presidency) responded to the frank but constructive criticism by Chief Akande.
“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 It 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 highlyrespected 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 per cent increase in the GDP when over 40 per cent of our youth are unemployed?” APC queried.
No comments:
Post a Comment