Atiku trying to ‘pit Tinubu against Buhari’
Protesters block Benin-Lagos Road
All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu yesterday said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was colluding with saboteurs to create the fuel crisis.
He said the opposition party was sabotaging the petrol supply to blackmail the Federal Government to gain political advantage.
Tinubu, who reacted to PDP’s statement on his remarks about the lingering scarcity and the redesigned naira in Abeokuta, Ogun State, said efforts by its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to cause a conflict between him and President Muhammadu Buhari, will fail.
Tinubu spoke at a rally in Makurdi, the Benue State capital, where the flags were given to party candidates.
He urged the people to vote for the governorship candidate Rev. Father Hyacinth Alia.
Tinubu said while in power, the PDP administration gave retail licenses to their supporters and sympathisers who are now hoarding fuel to create long queues across the country.
He said: “They met good oil prices for 16 good years. They didn’t remember gas pipelines. They are what I called saboteurs yesterday.
“They gave PMS licenses to their supporters and sympathisers. They are the ones who started creating fake queues. PDP, enough is enough.”
Tinubu said Atiku broke the civil service rule in Nigeria when he said he was doing transport business when he was in Customs Service.
He said: “They asked him, you are so rich, where did you get your money from, and he said from doing transport business. He didn’t know that was an offence. The only thing you are allowed to do as a civil servant is farming.”
Urging the youths to keep hope alive, Tinubu said his administration would ensure access to quality education and loans to allow brilliant and indigent students to have higher education.
In his prepared speech, which he did not read, Tinubu promised to reenact his feats as governor of Lagos State if elected.
He said Benue people would not be owed salaries, adding that he will also resolve the problem of IDPs in the state.
He said: “I am proud of what we accomplished in Lagos. I am so proud of it. I do not run off to live elsewhere. I live where my policies and programmes worked.
“Obi left Anambra because his policies and programmes failed. Just as we improved Lagos, we shall lead Nigeria to its greatest destiny.”
Tinubu promised to establish agricultural and industrial hubs, which will expand businesses and improve local incomes.
He also promised to make Benue a global leader in agriculture, bringing further income to the state.
He said: “Rather than just growing food crops, you will package, process and brand food items for other African and global markets exportation.
“My administration will establish commodity exchange boards guaranteeing prices for important crops so that you are ensured a decent living for your hard work.
“Our agricultural plan will establish an agricultural hub and improve access to finance. Both of these will enable you to modernise farm operations, and improve productivity while reducing labour through mechanised farming tools and modern technology.
“Working with the state government, we will encourage mining in the state in a regulated and sustainable way that benefits your communities and gives the labourer a just wage for his daily work.
“Limestone, lead, tin, and marble will be extracted and sold in Nigerian and foreign markets to stimulate the economy and enrich the people.”
On security, Tinubu said: “My administration will also invest in the quality of our democratic governance and in what must be our democratic security. We have heard your pleas. We know of the insecurity, the violent clashes and the loss of lives and property.
“Our security agenda will work. It will protect the people and secure the land. My national security plan invests heavily in surveillance equipment, in technology and training of our security forces. We stop the terrorists, kidnappers, killers and bandits.
“We will mobilise the totality of our national security assets to protect all Nigerians from real danger and from the real fear of danger.”
Minister of Special Duties and former Benue governor, Senator George Akume, extolled Tinubu’s leadership qualities and magnanimity as he charged Benue voters to vote for the APC candidate.
He recalled his friendship with Tinubu since 1993, saying he is a friend of the Benue people.
Describing Tinubu and his running mate, Kashim Shettima, as persons free of extremist tendencies, Akume said: “When so many churches were destroyed by Boko Haram in Borno, he (Shettima) rebuilt many of them”.
Plateau State Governor and Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Simon Lalong, Deputy National Chairman (South) of the APC, Senator Abubakar Kyari and Rev. Fr. Alia urged the voters to rally behind the APC for a more guaranteed future.
Other dignitaries at the rally included the APC vice presidential candidate; Niger State Governor Abubakar Sani Bello; former Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole and Senator Barnabas Gemade.
Lalong said: “We worked so hard with Akume in 2015 and won the state from PDP, but unfortunately, we gave it to the wrong person who took away our structures.
“But let me assure you that with Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President, there will be no more killings in Benue state and workers will be paid.”
Benue APC Governorship candidate, Rev. Fr. Alia, described Tinubu and Shettima as genuine and great leaders who will turn around the fortune of Nigeria for good.
‘Tinubu did not blame Buhari’
The Director, Media and Publicity, APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC),
Mr Bayo Onanuga, said in a statement that PDP cannot succeed in its attempt to create a gulf between the President and Tinubu.
Onanuga was reacting to a report alleging that Tinubu had blamed Buhari for the current fuel scarcity as well the CBN naira redesign at a rally in Abeokuta.
He said the report was fake, adding that it was sponsored by fifth columnists working in collaboration with the PDP.
He said: “For the records, Asiwaju Tinubu during the APC campaign rally at Abeokuta on Wednesday, did not mention, blame or accuse President Buhari for the current challenges in the country.”
He added that Tinubu was only attracting the government’s attention to the sabotage being carried out by some fifth columnists in the system, possibly working in cahoots with the PDP.
“The CBN officials, including Gov. Godwin Emefiele, have said many times that enough new naira notes have been supplied to the banks, yet our people complain that they have not been able to get the new notes.
“In recent days, many ATMs are either not working or when working, are dispensing the old naira notes, just a few days to the Jan. 31 deadline,” Onanuga said.
He added that Tinubu was aware of the salutary efforts by President Buhari to end the fuel queues by chairing a 14-man panel, even though the fuel queues and agony had continued.
He added that for a presidential candidate, who cared about the suffering of the people, Tinubu had a duty to warn the government that its efforts to make life better for Nigerians were being sabotaged on several fronts.
Onanuga said: “Tinubu only re-echoed what is well known and acknowledged, even by President Buhari himself at different fora: that there are fifth columnists in and outside of government.”
He said the fifth columnist often threw spanners in the works against good intentions and programmes of the government.
He wondered how an advisory genuinely made by Tinubu to protect and create goodwill for the government of his party became a basis for an attack.
“It can only be so in the jaundiced view of the PDP.
“It is in this light we found amusing the direction less Atiku campaign’s bagful of mischief in their hurriedly put together press statement meant to gain shameful mileage from the suffering of Nigerians.
“The PDP and Atiku should remember not to get high on their own smoke, no political blackmail and an attempt to create a conflict between Tinubu and his long-term ally, President Muhammadu Buhari can succeed.
“We have bad news for Atiku and his handlers: their latest mischief is therefore doomed to fail.”
Onanuga said as a patriotic and compassionate leader, Tinubu would not stomach seeing ordinary Nigerians being made to face excessive difficulties over mundane issues due to the activities of petrol and currency hoarders.
He added that as a proud leader of the APC, Tinubu would not also look indifferent as his party and the government got dirtied with a black brush at a critical time like this, whether he was a candidate or not.
“Atiku camp’s hasty move to mine political capital out of the clearly difficult situation betrays his campaign’s possible connivance, due to its desperation.
“As Tinubu said in Abeokuta, these orchestrated hardships will not stop his impending victory come Feb. 25.
“Nigerians shall surely vote for a party that is working to solve all the problems and mess created by the PDP for which their presidential candidate was an integral part in the, largely, 16 unproductive years they spent in government.
“Atiku and his team can continue their indulgence in fake news and twisted narratives, they cannot change the minds of the majority of Nigerians who have long rejected the PDP and Atiku, after their 16 wasted years in power,” Onanuga said.
He said Nigerians should no longer be in doubt about those working in cahoots with fifth columnists in the system to inflict avoidable pains on our hapless people for a political end.
