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The All Progressives Congress should replace its presidential candidate for the 2023 election, Bola Tinubu, so as to avoid further embarrassment, Phrank Shaibu, the Special Assistant (Public Communications) to the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, advised on Sunday.
According to him, Tinubu should only be contesting to be the Grand Comedian of the Federal Republic and not Grand Commander of the Federal Republic going by his utterances and scenarios occasioned by his continued miscues and gaffes.
“Tinubu may be a successful politician whose lifetime ambition is to be President of Nigeria, but it takes more than being a politician to become Nigeria’s President. Among other things, it takes credibility. The fact that everything about Tinubu is shrouded in secrecy should tell us that the APC presidential candidate lacks the credibility to govern a country like Nigeria.
“But more importantly, with the disaster that the APC administration has turned out to be, it will be more catastrophic to have a Tinubu as his successor. Governing Nigeria is not all about identifying surrogates who will man critical political offices for future political gains. Nigeria needs a debonair, cerebral, healthy, and suave President — a man in the mould of Atiku Abubakar,” Shaibu said.
According to him, it had become public knowledge that every time Tinubu came out in public to make a statement or two, he always goofed.
Shaibu said these in a statement titled, “Tinubu should be Grand Comedian of the Federal Republic,” obtained by journalists in Abuja on Sunday.
He said, “In his latest gaffe at the Lagos rally, he asked Nigerians to get their APV in order to vote for APC when even primary school children know that the PVC is the only item that admits a voter into a polling unit.
“If he is not saying that voter’s card has an expiration date, he is saying that young Nigerians are tweeting on WhatsApp or that 50 million youths should be recruited into the Nigerian Army and be fed with cassava in the morning, and ‘agbado’ in the night. How can you say Nigerians are tweeting on WhatsApp? Common, is that the kind of person we want to hand 21st Century Nigeria over to?
“Without mincing words, Tinubu’s gaffes already supply comedians, skit makers, meme-makers, and TikTokers with content. He is a self-writing joke and will make Nigeria a bye-word for scorn among the comity of nations, which is why he shouldn’t get close to power.
“Truth be told, old age is the most mis-recommending criterion against a Tinubu presidency. And examples abound to buttress this point. Just listen to any of his extempore speeches and what you find is a lack of coherence, logic and verve. It is for the purpose of unmasking the real Tinubu and exposing him for who he really is, that we have challenged the APC standard bearer to an hour-long television interview,” he added.
Shaibu said the APC’S seven-and-a-half-year reign was a sad reminder of Nigeria’s arrested development since 2015 when they came to power.
He said Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s claim at the Lagos rally that Tinubu would lift Nigerians out of hardship and hunger was an indictment on the APC, an admission that indeed over 133 million Nigerians now live in abject poverty as reported by the National Bureau of Statistics.
“Now they are selling a message of renewed hope. It is common knowledge that darkness cannot cure darkness and sickness cannot cure sickness. How can the APC be promising to fix problems exacerbated by the APC? This is balderdash,” he said.
Shaibu said that the most compelling reason for the APC to be de-registered is the fact that it had driven millions of Nigerians deeper into poverty since 2015 when it has been ruling the country and spent trillions of naira procuring hunger, darkness and insecurity.
“If the APC are not keen on replacing this candidate, they should in the alternative apologize to all Nigerians for bringing them nothing but the suffering of unquantifiable proportion since 2015, and proceed to make a solemn pledge not to have anything to do with governance, especially with the February 25, the election is fast approaching.
“I must confess that I consider the remarks credited to the APC presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Saturday, November 26, 2022, where he laboured, albeit unsuccessfully, to paint the PDP presidential candidate as ungrateful and over-ambitious as not only offensive but reckless,” Shaibu said.
He reasoned that instead of attacking Atiku, Tinubu should have dissipated that energy on telling Nigerians about himself, especially at this time when it was said at various fora that the only thing that was really about him is his person and that every other ascription on him is a borrowed robe.
The statement reads, “To be sure, Nigerians believe that Tinubu should come in the open to effectively disclaim the allegation that his name as it appears on public documents is not his name; that the parents he claimed were not his; that the certificates he claimed to be his are not and that the schools he claimed to have attended didn’t know him.
“The issue of which schools he attended is already in the public domain as only a few months ago, he told the Independent National electoral commission that he didn’t attend primary and secondary schools. The former Lagos governor, however, claimed he had two degrees from two American universities, which he further stated had been stolen by unknown soldiers during the military junta of the 1990s!!
“The disclosures came in an affidavit submitted by Tinubu to the electoral office as part of his eligibility filings for the 2023 presidential elections. The documents released on Friday, June 24 2022, showed that the APC presidential flagbearer left the columns for his primary and secondary education unmarked. But he said he obtained a degree in business and administration in 1979, apparently referring to his previous claims of attending the Chicago State University,” it said.
Shaibu recalled Tinubu’s claim that “I went on self-exile from October 1994 to October 1998. When I returned, I discovered that all my property, including all the documents relating to my qualifications and my certificates in respect of paragraph three above, were looted by unknown persons.”
According to him, Tinubu’s latest claims appear to contradict his previous election submissions, especially in 1999 and 2003 when he ran for office as a governorship candidate in Lagos.
He claimed both times that he attended primary and secondary schools.
(The PUNCH)
