Paul Orude Bauchi
Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State, has reacted to Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) should withdraw the nomination of its governors and senators standing trial over allegations of corruption if it wants to be taken seriously.
The presidential spokesman was reacting to a statement by the PDP that the endorsement of Osagie Ize-Iyamu by President Muhammadu Buhari showed he encourages corruption.
But in statement issued, yesterday by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Muktar Gidado, Governor Mohammed described Shehu’s statement as ridiculous.
“Obviously, the Presidency has been boxed into a corner in the melodrama surrounding the curious emergence of Osagie Ize-Iyamu, a man who had been so irredeemably deconstructed by Adams Oshiomole, former chairman of the APC, that his electoral value has diminished to almost zero,” Mohammed stated.
The governor argued that the APC “is in damage control mode, desperately clutching to every and any conceivable straw, in a doomed effort to rescue the sinking boat of its Edo gubernatorial ticket”
He stated that the APC has descend so low, “hiding under the esteemed office of the President who may not be aware of their shenanigans, as to attempt to rewrite the nations recent history”
On Senator Bala Mohammed and related issues, “it has become necessary to make the following clarifications, if only to stop the APC from continuing to rub salt into the injury Unlike Pastor Ize-Iyamu who is the candidate of the ruling APC, a party that professes the eradication of corruption as its mantra, as the unimpeachable cornerstone of its national revival programme; Bala Mohammed was the candidate of the opposition party, a man who was ready to subject his integrity to electoral scrutiny without passing through the same moral crucible as the candidate of the ruling party. The electorate believed him; set his prosecution and persecution aside; and got him elected, defeating an incumbent Governor.
Not only had Bala Mohammed vigorously contested, denied and defended all the allegations against him in a court of competent jurisdiction before his election, as Governor which subsequently conferred immunity on him, it should be placed on record that prior to that, he had recorded some landmark victories over the EFCC in all the cases that had been decided.