The ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, and its governors have dismissed reports of an altercation between President Muhamamdu Buhari and his vice, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, describing it as mere gossip.
Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the APC Governors Steering Committee on Media and Communication, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Lagos State governor, noted that just on Wednesday, the vice president presided over a meeting of the Federal Executive Council, FEC.
Sanwo-Olu, who was represented by his deputy, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, said as governors, they deal with facts and not rumours, urging Nigerians to continue to support the Buhari administration.
“There is no crack. It is in the realm of gossips. By the time they said that (news report), the Vice President went to Zimbabwe to represent this country. It was the prerogative of the President but he nominated him. Like I said earlier, it is in the realm of gossips because only on Wednesday, the Vice President presided over the Federal Executive Committee FEC meeting which is the highest decision-making body in the country.
“So, we don’t listen to rumours. We deal with facts and the fact is that they are working together. So, it is all rumour and don’t take it that serious,” he said.
At a separate news conference in Abuja, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, National Publicity Secretary of the Party, also restated the position of the governors.
“We have important issues of governance than to continue to respond to fallacies. How do you determine a crack? The vice president had been sent out to represent the President at an international event, after PDP saw a crack.
”The vice president presided over the FEC meeting just on Wednesday. Is that part of the PDP’s crack? Let us stop this joke. We know we have challenges in this country, let us face these challenges,” he said.
He added that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, had no serious job from now till 2023 except to aim to distract the APC from executing the mandate given by the people.
He said: “It is in the interest of the PDP to keep up that tempo of intemperate language because that is the only job they have to do for the next four years, to distract the APC. It is not in our interest to join issues with them because we are focused on governance.”
PDP printing APC posters
APC also accused the PDP of trying to cause confusion in the country by printing 2023 presidential campaign posters with the images of some of its leaders.
“As a party, we want to state clearly that having won elections convincingly and having been given the mandate to run government for the next four years, our major and only focus now is governance. We are not engaging in any other activity about 2023 elections.
”Wherever you see such (posters), you can be sure it is from mischief makers and, of course, we know it is part of the strategy of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to continue to take actions to cause distractions for the governing party from focusing on anything that is important to the people of Nigeria which is to deal with the challenges that we are all faced with.
”These challenges include governance, security, economy and corruption as well as other associated issues. That is what we are focused on. So, as a party, we understand the social contract we have signed with the people of Nigeria with the renewal of our mandate.
”Whatever poster you might have seen about any of our leaders anywhere in this country is irrelevant to us, we do not have a hand in it and it is not from those leaders. It is strictly part of the strategy of a party that is supposed to provide alternative to our governance model and since they do not have such, the only thing they can do is to continue to throw spanners into the works.
”So, we urge all our members to focus on what is important to us and so we dissociate ourselves and our leaders from such issues that have to do with elections. Elections have been done and dusted and what we are now faced with is the issue of governance,” said Issa-Onilu.
PDP’s case at S/Court
The ruling party also expressed its readiness to meet the PDP at the Supreme Court regarding the last presidential election, adding that by going to the apex court, the PDP was only attempting to repeat its failure at the tribunal.
On allegations by the Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP, that the ruling APC was attempting to arm-twist the Judiciary into upholding the verdict of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, the APC said CUPP, which is an arm of the PDP, was jittery because muscling the judiciary was the pastime of the PDP when it held sway for 16 years as Nigeria’s ruling party.
“Ideally, we would not have responded to the so-called CUPP which is just an arm of PDP. Faced with the challenges that we currently have in this country, it is a complete waste of time to respond to charlatans.
”But if you listened to the contents of the press conference they recently had, they said things that are very baffling and very disturbing and you would wish to ask yourself if these people are true Nigerians and if they mean well for the country.
”This is because when you disparage state institutions and you talk down and try to undermine an important institution such as the Judiciary, that is something that we should all be worried about and that is why we are responding to this.
“It is not in our practice to arm-twist any institution whatsoever, least of them the Judiciary. We understand the importance of this arm of government; we understand that we are all surviving and living on the rule of law, and the only way to undermine the order and security of a nation is to undermine the Judiciary.
”By the time you strangulate these judicial officers, then you are charting a path to the collapse of the institution that we all rely upon to survive as a nation. So, it is clearly not our practice but we also understand where PDP is coming from.
”We understand that for 16 years, that has been the practice and perhaps they imagined that this is the instrument that any other political party would want to apply. We don’t need to strangulate the Judiciary and we don’t need to undermine any institution.
”We don’t need to disparage the Judiciary. And the issues before the Judiciary about the elections are clear. We have an unprecedented delivery of judgment at the presidential tribunal the other time and so we are all happy to know that the PDP has taken the next step by going further to the Supreme Court and we are meeting them there.
”It is unfortunate that they cannot create new issues. All the issue they have, have been put on the table and they don’t hold water. That is why they failed woefully at the tribunal. So, they still have this opportunity to repeat that failure,” APC declared.
