Special adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on media and publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati has taken the leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Lagos state governor, Babatunde Fashola to the clearner, saying that their desperation for power has turned them into lunatics.
Dr. Abati told newsmen at the Presidential Villa, Abuja today that Tinubu and Fashola have been displaying shallowness and hollowness in their attacks on President Jonathan.
“And what I have tried to do is to expose their shallowness and hollowness and to appeal to all right thinking persons to dismiss (their attack on the President) as another gimmick coming from a desperate political group seeing that defeat is steering them in the face and have resorted to greater desperation. And who knows we may witness even far greater desperation from their camp as we get closer to election day. But our appeal to Nigerians is that this country is greater than everyone’s ambition and at the end of the day what is important is Nigeria.”
Dr. Abati picked quarreled with governor Fashola against the background of comment he made to the effect that the robbery incident that occurred yesterday in Lekki, Lagos State was due to the presence of President Jonathan in Lagos, adding that the governor said that all the policemen who should have been responsible for security in the state had been deployed to serve President Jonathan.
“We consider the statement attributed to governor Fashola as grossly and utterly irresponsible. We expect that a man of his status who is governor of a state should speak more responsibly. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever that the entire police formation in Lagos State would be deployed to protect the President of Nigeria.
“The visit of the President to Lagos or any part of the country does not necessitate the depletion of the police force active in that particular state or environment. President has a defined team that protects him anywhere he goes. And again President Jonathan does not need the entire police force in Lagos State to protect him: a state where he is loved by the people and where as we have seen, he enjoys overwhelming support in the lead up to the 2015 presidential elections.”
Dr. Abati considered Fashola statement as not only irresponsible, but also unintelligent “because it flies in the face of facts and it just does not add up.”
He advised the governor not to play with lives of the people all in an attempt to play politics, saying that while people died in that unfortunate incident and President Jonathan commisurated with the affected families, the governor is playing cheap, irresponsible and disgusting politics.
Turning to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who alleged that he had been offered by President Jonathan the position of the Vice President in what he called “an imaginary national interim government,” Dr. Abati said that except people have not been following the news or they have chosen willfully to play deaf and dumb, President Jonathan has said again and again that an idea of an interim national government is treasonable.
He said that the President even made it clear that he has never anywhere discussed that idea with anybody and he has never proposed it at any forum.
“That as President of Nigeria, the democratically elected president his ambition can never be to head an Interim National Government under whatever circumstances.
“He is going to this presidential elections on the basis of the records of his achievements. On the conviction that he has served Nigerians well and the overwhelming majority of Nigerians are appreciative of the achievements of his administration and are therefore solidly behind him and will vote for him massively on March 28.
“He therefore has no reason whatsoever to support such an unconstitutional proposition as Interim National Government which in its fullest will amount to assault on democratic principles under this circumstance.
“Again if you de-construct the statement that purportedly emanated from the office of the Asiwaju Tibunu, you will see again the absurd nature of it. The absolutely ridiculous nature of it in the sense that given the configuration of Nigeria, it is not likely, totally impossible to have an ING arrangement in which you will have a southerner as President and then another southerner as Vice President. It is not something that is likely to work given the nature of our politics.
“But the Tinubu camp putting out that statement was so much in a hurry to engage in their usual game of deceiving the public of propagandaism of the current electoral process, that the emptiness, the hollowness, the shallowness of their proposition escaped them.
This is another gimmick coming from a desperate political group seeing that defeat is steering them in the face and are resorting to greater desperation. And who knows may witness even far greater desperation from their camp as we get closer to election day. But our appeal to Nigerians is that this country is greater than everyone’s ambition and at the end of the day what is important is Nigeria. And those who seem determined to pull down this country will lies, with black information, they are the enemies of this country and do not deserve to be given the opportunity to occupy, to enjoy opportunities that they do not deserve.”
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