The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council has labelled former vice president and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party as Nigeria’s public enemy, number one.
The campaign council in a statement by its Director of Media and Publicity, Bayo Onanuga, premised its argument on what it called Atiku’s romance with saboteurs responsible for the naira and fuel scarcity being experienced across the country.
The statement read in part, “The current sabotage of the naira notes swap and fuel scarcity that have caused untold hardship to millions of Nigerians across the country revealed the true character of the PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, as public enemy, number one.
“Nigerians will recall that since the Central Bank introduced its current cash-limit and new naira notes swap policies, Atiku Abubakar and the PDP maintained opportunistic silence with the hope that they would benefit from the discomfort the policies would create for Nigerians and the resentment they would generate for the ruling APC.
“While Atiku and PDP were in bed with the saboteurs and fifth columnists among the operators of money deposit banks and oil marketers who created the current logjam to force the outcome of the February 25 presidential election in favour of the former Vice President, our candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu courageously pitched his tent with the poor masses who have been most negatively impacted by the antics of these evil doers.
“Having realised they have lost the initiative and their antics exposed to Nigerians by Asiwaju Tinubu at the APC presidential campaign rally in Abeokuta, Atiku made a half-hearted appeal to CBN to ‘slightly’ extend the deadline for the currency swap.
“We are currently at a loss to understand what informed the current call of Atiku on CBN not to extend the February 10 deadline despite the unmitigated hardship still being faced by many Nigerians who could not meet their basic daily needs as a result of lack of cash from banks and the empty Automated Teller Machines.”
In a veiled dig at the former Vice President, Onanuga added that “anyone who lives in Nigeria and not Dubai and visits banks and ATM locations will feel sad that the CBN is making our people suffer for its badly timed naira swap policy.”
Turning its attention to Godwin Emefiele, the campaign council recalled that the “The CBN governor gave insight into the nature of the problem when he revealed in Daura last Sunday that out of the N3.3tn in circulation, only N500bn is in the bank vaults. So far, only N1.9tn has been received by the banks for swap.
“But people are not getting the new notes to spend, thus triggering the huge anger in the land against Emefiele. We thus find it ludicrous that a man who joined the call for an extension of the deadline last week is championing a new campaign against further extension because he feels the suffering of Nigerians will serve his own political end to become president at all cost,” the statement further noted.
“This is a man who wants to be President and does not mind even if he presides over the graves of Nigerians as long as his inordinate ambition materialises in line with the prophecy of his marabouts.
“It is crystal clear to every Nigerian of conscience now that Atiku Abubakar and PDP do not mean well for our country. PDP and Atiku have become desperadoes who will wish calamity on the country as long as it makes them win an election they are destined to lose spectacularly.
“Atiku is now public enemy number one in Nigeria and must be rejected at the polls on 25 February. If Atiku Abubakar has the poor people of our country at heart like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the PDP candidate will not be advocating adherence to a policy that has become a burden too heavy to bear for our people.”
Reacting, Phrank Shaibu, Special Assistant on Public Communications to Atiku Abubakar knocked the APC presidential campaign spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, for accusing Atiku of masterminding the naira shortage and petrol scarcity, saying Onanuga was too timid to say the President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), was the Minister of Petroleum and was also the one who approved the naira redesign policy of the CBN.
He added that the spokesperson had made himself the official interpreter of Tinubu, whom he added had been misfiring in his speech.
Shaibu also stated that the APC spokesperson had the rare skill of clarifying the gibberish that his principal usually uttered, which showed that he had a creative imagination.
Meanwhile, the Director-General of the Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Council in Rivers State, Dr Abiye Sekibo, has dismissed claims in some quarters that Atiku Abubakar is an enemy of the state.
He also lamented that members loyal to the PDP PCC had been victimised by the Nyesom Wike-led government in the state.
Sekibo spoke in an Arise Television interview on Friday monitored by our correspondent.
Sekibo said that Atiku had contributed immensely to the economic prosperity of the state, even as he stressed that the PDP PCC was not involved in any form of violence.
He noted that Atiku was a corporate citizen of the state because he had contributed to the economic well-being of the state before vying for office.
“The real PDP in Rivers State are the supporters of Atiku Abubakar, and those who say that there is connivance with the APC are the ones who are actually conniving with the APC.
“There has been no incidence of violence from supporters of Atiku Abubakar against anybody, whether within the PDP or outside the PDP.
“But the Atiku supporters have suffered; they have been beaten, shot at, our offices had been closed, property had been revoked, the land allocation had been revoked.
“Now, who is doing that? Is it those who control the government or those who are outside the government? In Rivers State, all the Atiku supporters are not in the Rivers State Government. So, they don’t have the power to dish out any form of patronage to anybody.”
But the state Commissioner for Information and Communications, Chris Finebone, dismissed Sekibo’s claim, saying that Atiku’s supporters were unknown in the state.
He said, “Rivers State governor victimising Atiku supporters in Rivers State? In the first place, who are Atiku supporters in Rivers State?
“We don’t even know Atiku supporters in Rivers State apart from a couple of past business partners of Atiku who are struggling to revive their business partnership under the guise of politics. But no one is victimizing them. No one is interested in their private business with Atiku. It is far from it.”
