By Olumide Adeyinka
Former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 23 presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has told President Muhammadu Buhari and the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) to take responsibility of the heightened insecurity in the country.
Atiku was reacting to a report purportedly released by a United States based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), called Centre for Diplomacy and Democracy.
In the said report, the NGO had blamed the opposition in Nigeria for the killings, kidnapping, bloodletting and banditry across the country.
However, in a statement Tuesday by the Atiku’s Media Adviser, Mr. Paul Ibe, the former Vice President described the report as a contrived write-up by a fictitious NGO.
Atiku said it was a demonstration of how low the administration has descended in deepening divisions and promoting instability in the country.
The statement said, “The contrived report by a fictitious non-governmental organisation in the United States is the deepest low that Muhammadu Buhari administration has gone in causing further division and promoting instability in Nigeria.
“Anyone versed enough in the protocol of international NGOs will discern without much ado that the particular report by a faceless, insipid organisation known as ‘Centre for Diplomacy and Democracy’ was contrived with express mobilisation from officials of the Buhari administration in a shameless and disingenuous attempt to find a jejune explanation for the rising rate of insecurity in Nigeria.
“Our investigation has revealed that there is no such report as being touted and no such body called ‘Centre for Diplomacy and Democracy’. Americans will never write ‘Centre’. They will write ‘Center’ in conformity to the American English usage”.
The PDP presidential candidate said it’s distasteful that the Buhari administration has resorted to passing the buck, rather than have a self-introspection and admit to the world that its policies and actions are responsible for the divisions in the country.
He knocked the President and his team for choosing to employ the services of a faceless NGO to blame the opposition for its own ineptitude.
“We must remind President Buhari that the buck stops on his table and his infantile style of looking for whom to blame for his failures will not obliterate his abysmal record of performance in the past four years.
“The Buhari administration and the ruling APC are renowned for propaganda stunt and double-speak. Sadly, it does not matter to them the disturbing number of criminalities happening on a daily basis in Nigeria.
“In their warped thinking, the performance rate of security chiefs during times like this is determined by how much weight the Inspector General of Police has lost.
“The question to ask is: how would the APC have reproved a President who makes such careless remarks on national security at a time when insecurity in the country has assumed epidemic proportions?
“President Buhari and the APC have shown without equivocation that the job at hand is overwhelming for them. And because they lack the basic clue on how to tame the bogey that they have created, they now scamper around like school kids who have caused an upset in a highly sensitive science laboratory.
“Nigerians don’t pray for a President who passes the buck. All they want is a President who can hold the bull by the horns and get the job done. After all, President Buhari took an oath to defend lives and property of the citizens, which is the primary responsibility of every government”, Atiku added.
