Wale Banjo
National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has faulted the democratic credentials of former Vice President and presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar.
Tinubu said in a statement, yesterday, that Atiku’s recent comments on the suspension of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, will go down in political history as a classic case of self-incrimination.
The APC leader, who was reacting to Atiku’s comments on the CJN suspension, added: “Those of you who know him and even those who don’t, know that his claims that he has dedicated all his life to the defense of democracy is not true.
“If all of his life has been dedicated to support democracy, then, he is far too young to run for president. However, I must congratulate him for having somehow managed to find or begin a second life. This rebirth as a defender of democracy must have taken place only a few short hours ago.”
Tinubu said Atiku’s previous life of over 70 years was one of skirting democracy and of blatant impunity in attempting to enshrine reactionary government and installing an unjust political economy on the backs of the people.
He said: “In his address, he claims the nation has entered a difficult moment. To my dear and good friend Atiku, I say the difficulty is not so much with the moment but with your memory.
“When you lorded over Nigeria, in tandem with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, there were myriad court orders which mandated that your government render to Lagos State the funds due it to improve the lives of its millions of inhabitants.
“Instead, you gladly and without dispute joined Obasanjo in disregard for these unambiguous legal verdicts.
“In so doing, you demeaned the rule of law.
“You also readily sacrificed the economic development and welfare of millions of innocent people in Lagos just to gain some illicit political advantage that proved to be fleeting and of no avail to you in the end. You now speak of democracy and the need for executive restraint.
Regardless, PDP insisted Atiku is an established democrat and that Tinubu’s tirade cannot remove from that fact.
It stated that the former Lagos governor, “in attacking Atiku’s state of the nation address, which embodied the concerns, fears and apprehensions of Nigerians over president Muhammadu Buhari’s despotic tendencies, has shown that he has finally turned his back against Nigerians because of pecuniary interests.”